


In All Our Lives

by stoplightglow



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Past Lives, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 20:27:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19117111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stoplightglow/pseuds/stoplightglow
Summary: “Everything’s connected," Gerard says. "It isn’t just art history. Artishistory. Artisculture. Without the crucial backbones, it all disappears. So when one timeline gets messed up—” He looks despairingly up at the ceiling. "-it all goes down."For all those times you thought, you know what bandom is really missing? Time travel, arson, and an art history lesson.





	In All Our Lives

**Author's Note:**

> this is an old thing i reworked with the help of my brilliant beta [nat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/corruptedkid). warnings for dubious historical information. hope you enjoy.

Mikey nudges Frank’s foot under the table. “Dude, hey. Are you busy tonight?”

Frank’s eyes snap open and he blinks a few times in succession, trying to get his wits about him. In his defense, he’d stayed up half the night finishing an Econ paper, and this lecture on the History of the English Language just isn’t enough to keep him conscious. He looks down at his blank notes and then over at Mikey’s, who has half of the page filled up with his scrawling handwriting. Shit. “Tonight?”

Mikey nods. “My brother has a gallery opening and I was hoping I wouldn’t have to suffer alone. It’s cool if you need to stay home and catch up on sleep, though.”

“I’m not tired,” Frank says, then is conveniently betrayed by a yawn. “Okay, maybe a little. But I’m going to power nap between Women’s Studies and Stat.”

“No pressure, man.” 

Frank wiggles his pen between two fingers and frowns. It’s no secret that he needs to get out after a marathon week of essays, but his dorm was supposed to be empty all evening. He’d been looking forward to jerking off loudly and eating takeout on the couch.

It’s Mikey, though. Mikey would do the same for him. “I don’t know. Convince me?”

The corner of Mikey’s mouth twitches up, because he knows he’s already won. “Open bar. If you say you’re friends with my brother, they won’t card you.”

Frank rolls his eyes. “I have an excellent fake, thank you very much.”

“Which I got for you.” Oh. Right.

“Will I embarrass myself by not knowing shit about art?”

“Not any more than I will.” Mikey shrugs. “Besides, knowing Gerard? He’ll find it endearing. You have to be careful, though. One wrong move and you’ll be stuck in a five hour discussion on color theory.”

Mikey sounds like he’s speaking from personal experience. That should maybe worry Frank, but…open bar. No twenty-year-old has ever turned down that offer. “Yeah, alright. You owe me one, though.”

“Sweet.” Mikey doesn’t smile, but it’s a close thing. He slides his notebook over until it’s bumped up against Frank’s. “Now copy these. We have a test on Tuesday.”

Frank’s eyes go wide. “Since when?”

*

“So.” Frank shoves his hands deeper into his jacket pockets. It’s November; he hasn’t had the chance to go back to his mom’s house and swap out all of his fall clothes for their winter counterparts yet, and the patched-up denim he’s got isn’t really doing shit against the wind. “Your brother. Gerard. What kind of art does he make?”

Mikey lifts an eyebrow. “If I gave you a term, would you even know what it meant?”

He gets Frank’s nastiest frown in response, but it loses its effect since half of Frank’s face is hidden in his collar and the other half is pink with cold. “I am sacrificing a perfectly good evening of doing nothing for you, Michael. Be nice.”

Mikey rolls his eyes. “Alright, fine. He’s not actually an artist anymore. He runs the gallery.”

“Oh.” Frank tilts his head to the side, contemplating whether that means Gerard will be more or less pretentious. “But he used to be?”

“Went to school for it.” Mikey shrugs. “But, hell, I’m in language studies. It’s not like I’ll end up using my degree either.”

“Could be worse.” Frank grimaces. “Could be business.”

They both know he’s right, so Mikey just pats Frank’s back consolingly. They trudge through the dark streets until sparsely lit brick buildings give way to a modern-looking storefront with a warm glow pouring through its windows. There are already people inside, milling around in suits and dresses and toting flutes of champagne. Shit. Frank is pretty used to feeling underdressed, but this is a whole new level. Mikey’s just in jeans and a Pumpkins hoodie, though — so either he didn’t know, or he didn’t care enough to warn Frank. 

“Dude. This has got to be the classiest place in Jersey.”

Something like pride dances across Mikey’s expression. “Yeah, Gee’s got an eye for this kind of stuff.” He pulls the door open and ducks through, and Frank follows before it can close on him.

The inside of the building is so sleek and inviting that it looks like it belongs in a magazine. Frank pads after Mikey to the bar, sparing the art on the walls quick glances as they pass. A few people shoot them confused, offended looks, but Frank does his best to pay them no mind.

Mikey drops Gerard’s name and orders them two fruity things, since apparently this place is too upscale to just get a beer. They stand with their backs to the bar and sip, observing the room. Frank runs his finger along the rim of his glass. “So what happens now?”

“We wait for Gerard to show up,” says Mikey. “And in the meantime, we consume enough booze to make standing around all night looking at art seem bearable.”

Frank knocks their glasses together, and they drink to that. 

Frank doesn’t count the minutes, but it’s not long before the atmosphere in the room changes. Everyone’s attention shifts to the front, and the lively chatter quiets down to a low vibration. Caught up in a conversation about whether or not Wonder Woman’s invisible jet would qualify for student parking, Frank doesn’t immediately cut his gaze away from Mikey to look over; when he finally does, he very nearly drops his glass.

The guy standing by the door is not at  _ all _ what he was expecting. Based on the looks of this place, Gerard should be in a pressed suit with a thousand dollar watch on his wrist. Instead, he dons a simple white button-up half-tucked into black jeans. His dark hair is such a mess he could have just rolled out of bed, and it’s long enough to brush the tops of his shoulders as he shrugs off his coat.

“Uh, sorry I’m late.” He offers the room a guilty smile that makes Frank continue to erase his mental image of smug, gallery-owning bigshot. “I hope you’ve all been enjoying yourselves so far. We’ve got a lot of talented artists here tonight, and they’d love to talk about their work with you, so make sure you say hello.” Gerard’s gaze flits around the gallery, and Frank swears they make eye contact. “Thank you all for coming, seriously. Don’t hesitate to pull me aside if you need something.”

As soon as the speech is over, the room’s normal rhythm returns. Frank elbows Mikey so hard that his drink nearly sloshes over the edge. “ _ That’s _ your brother?”

“Yes.” Mikey sighs. “Late to his own party, as always.”

Frank watches out of the corner of his eye as Gerard shakes hands and talks with guests. He looks completely in his element, gesturing widely and pointing at pieces of art. Frank doesn’t even realize he’s zoned out until Mikey clears his throat. “Shit, sorry. Did you say something?”

A slow smirk spreads over Mikey’s features. “You want me to call him over here?”

“What?” Frank is pretty sure his entire face flames red. “No, Mikey, I swear to god, if you—”

But it’s too late. Mikey sets down his drink so he can cup both hands around his mouth. “Gerard!”

Before Frank can even gulp, Gerard is standing in front of them and engulfing Mikey in a giant hug. “You made it! Thank god. These things can get so fucking  _ boring.” _

Mikey rolls his eyes over Gerard’s shoulder, and Frank grins at him. “I don’t know why you do it, Gee.”

Gerard pulls back and makes a face. Frank catches the corners of his own mouth turning up as a result and forces himself to look away. “You know why. Keeps the investors happy. Who’s this?” Gerard asks.

Frank stops staring at his shoes and sticks out a hand. He can introduce himself, at least. “Frank. I go to school with Mikey.”

“He’s really interested in art,” Mikey adds as they shake. “Wants you to show him around.”

Gerard’s eyebrows shoot up, pleasant surprise written all over his face. Frank is going to  _ strangle _ Mikey. “Really?”

“Um, no.” Frank feels himself flush and tries not to wince. It’s better than lying and accidentally digging a grave, he reminds himself. “I mean — I don’t mean that I don’t want to see your gallery. You’ve got a great place here. It’s just that I don’t know anything about art.”

Gerard’s expression clears. “Oh! That’s no big deal. We can fix that.” He grabs Frank by the forearm, and Frank barely has time to put his drink down before he’s pulled over to a canvas covered in newspapers and splatter paint. He shoots Mikey a pathetic glance over his shoulder, but Mikey pretends to be too busy talking to the bartender to notice.

“So this one’s about, like, economic collapse.” Gerard beckons Frank up close enough that he can see individual specks of bright red paint. “The artist could definitely describe it better than me — she’s around here somewhere, I think — but the main idea is that the more chaotic the painting method, the worse the news lying underneath is.” He points to a piece further down the wall. It’s made up of smooth brush strokes in cooler, calmer colors.

“You wouldn’t see that in a museum,” Frank says without thinking, then immediately regrets it. Fuck, he’s just met the guy, and he’s already managed to insult his taste. When he looks over at Gerard, though, he’s smiling.

“I know,” Gerard says, gazing up at the canvas. “That’s why I started this gallery, to make a home for all the art that museums deemed unworthy. Their system is such bullshit — it’s all about who you are, or where you’re from, or who you know. So many artists with potential get turned away. Here, come look at this one.”

Frank trails him to the other side of the room, where a huge, psychedelic painting of a man made out of plants is hanging. “It’s a self-portrait,” Gerard explains. “The artist wanted to communicate how we’re all connected to the Earth, how we need it to survive.”

It’s kind of intimidating to look up at, if Frank’s honest, all swirling greens and browns. He never would have gotten that meaning from just seeing it — he probably would have just filed it away as Poison Ivy knockoff and gone on with his evening. But Gerard looks completely enraptured, so genuine in his belief, that Frank doesn’t have the guts to mention that. “Do all of the pieces in here have to do with social change?”

“Basically.” Gerard shrugs. “That’s the art that matters, after all. That’s the stuff that museums are afraid of. Every artist in here, Frank — I genuinely believe they’re going to be the masters of the next generation.” 

Frank schools the skepticism off of his face before it can show. That’s a lofty statement, sure, but Gerard still knows better than he does. “How can you tell?”

“Take my word for it.” Gerard’s eyes glitter, and for a second he looks just like Mikey. “Sometimes I just—”

“Gerard!” A thin woman with dark, curly hair bounds towards them and wraps Gerard in half a hug. Frank’s stomach does a little twist, because, okay, girlfriend. He unconsciously takes a step back. “It’s so good to see you again. It’s been too long.”

“You say that every time.” Gerard hugs back for a moment but then pulls away, looking back to Frank. “Frank, this is Evanna. She’s one of my biggest investors.”

_ Oh. _ An  _ investor. _ Frank swallows the lump of embarrassment in his throat. In retrospect, he should really ask Mikey what Gerard’s deal is before he goes around making wild assumptions. He offers a hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too.” Evanna shakes it firmly. “Magnificent gallery, isn’t it?”

“It really is.” Risking a glance at Gerard, Frank sees that he’s smiling. He fights off a matching grin. 

“When I met Gerard, this place was just four walls and a wine rack,” Evanna tells Frank. “He’s come a long way.”

Gerard’s smile warps into something more plastic. “All thanks to you.”

“You know it was my pleasure.” Evanna’s face turns pleased; apparently that was the answer she had been hoping for. She waves her empty champagne flute in the air. “I’d love to stay and chat, but I’m afraid some more champagne is calling my name. Do catch up with me later, though, okay?”

“Sorry about that,” Gerard mutters once she’s flounced off. “I know it can seem of ridiculous, but people like her are the reason this place exists at all.”

Frank shrugs. He’s a college student; he’s used to bullshitting to get what he needs. “Gotta do what you gotta do.”

“Yeah, exactly.” Gerard pauses and sweeps Frank with an appraising look that maybe raises a few goosebumps. “Now that we’ve finished your mandatory art lesson, you want to see some stuff that isn’t on display?”

“Uh,” Frank says eloquently. “What?”

“There are a few pieces in the back room that didn’t get put out.” Gerard points a thumb over his shoulder at a door that Frank hadn’t even noticed before. “You interested? It’d be a little quieter back there, too.”

Okay, so maybe Frank doesn’t know much about art, but that doesn’t mean he’s an  _ idiot. _ He knows what it means when a cute guy asks you to go somewhere quieter. A little voice in the back of his head tells him that maybe he should be careful — this is Mikey’s  _ brother, _ after all — but it shuts up after one glance over to the bar, where Mikey is doing some heavy leaning and flirting with the bartender who has recently rolled up his sleeves to reveal, hello, a more than respectable amount of tattoos. 

“Yeah,” Frank agrees. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

Gerard’s face lights up like the fucking sun, and he reaches for Frank’s hand. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

“Do you usually take people back here?” Frank asks as they nonchalantly slip through the back room door. The gaze Gerard turns on him makes Frank’s stomach flip.

“Only the lucky ones.” He tugs on the chain to a bulb in the ceiling. The room illuminates with dim, yellow light, and it does something to the shadows on Gerard’s face that makes it impossible to look away. “What?” he asks, catching Frank staring.

“Nothing.” Frank shakes his head, thankful it’s dark in here. “Show me what you’ve got.” 

Deciding to let it slide, Gerard pulls a sheet off of a medium-sized canvas. “This one’s supposed to go out next month. A girl from upstate New York did it. I think she’s going to be big.”

Looking at it, Frank can’t help but agree. Even with his limited experience, he can tell when things are beautiful. And haunting. The piece is of a girl sitting underwater, peeling apples into corkscrews with her fingernails. 

“It reminds me of, like—” Frank tries to string his thoughts together, but the half-lidded way Gerard is watching him isn’t helping. “Like, Snow White. But if she was the evil one instead of the Queen.”

Gerard’s lips part slightly, and he tilts his head. “I hadn’t actually thought of that.”

Frank tries not to look surprised. He’d figured it was kind of obvious, for once. “Then what do you think it means?”

“I have no idea.” Gerard huffs out a laugh. “That’s why I like it so much, actually.”

“Maybe you’re overthinking it.” Frank taps the sheet draped over the piece next to it. “What’s this one?”

“Oh, uh.” Gerard’s grin wobbles. “That’s — that one’s actually not—”

“What, is it a nude or something?” Frank lifts the corner of the fabric, but Gerard makes a noise in his throat that makes him drop it. Frank’s eyes go wide. “Is it  _ your _ nude?”

“Jesus Christ, no!” Though it’s hard to see, Frank is fairly sure he catches a blush. That’s interesting. “It’s not a nude. It is, uh. It is mine, though.”

“Yours?” Frank echoes, momentarily confused. Then it slots into place. “Wait, you painted this?”

Gerard nods and looks at the floor.

“But.” Frank is still working on putting all the puzzle pieces together. “Mikey said you weren’t an artist anymore.”

Gerard rolls his eyes, but it doesn’t do much of anything when he’s staring at the concrete. “No one ever really  _ stops _ being an artist. I’m not going to be in any galleries, but I doubt I’m ever going to wake up and not have the urge to create something. It sticks with you.”

The way he says it, Frank can tell that he’s stumbled onto something important, and he’s suddenly struck by it. “I think you should show me,” he says. Gerard’s eyes flick up to him, and for a moment he’s worried he’s pushed too far, especially considering that he barely knows the guy — but there’s a silent kind of hopefulness in them, like all it’ll take is the right words. “If you’re not going to hang it up, don’t you think it deserves some sort of audience?”

Gerard wavers, and his hand twitches towards the sheet. “Promise not to laugh?”

“Why would I laugh?” Frank says, then desperately hopes that he’s not going to eat his words. After one more apprehensive look, Gerard leans over and tugs the cover off, staying a little bit in Frank’s space even once he’s done. When the light lands on the piece, Frank feels himself go breathless for the second time tonight.

“Dude,” Frank says reverently, stopping his hand just in time before it reaches out and traces the lines of paint. It’s a dark scene, like a graveyard but from a perspective Frank has never seen before. It takes him a moment to place it. “This is — it’s what a cemetery would look like if you were dead. If you were buried and looking out.”

“Yeah,” Gerard says, and Frank can feel his eyes on him. “I know it’s kind of morbid, or whatever.”

“I like it,” Frank says emphatically, and only then does he notice the pinched expression on Gerard’s face. “Do you not like it?”

“I don’t know, it’s just.” He tugs on the ends of his hair. “Nothing. It’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid.” Frank turns to face him. “C’mon, tell me.”

Gerard’s jaw clenches and relaxes, and his eyes dart around the entire room before landing back on Frank. “Jesus, for a gallery owner, I’m really shitty at talking about my art.”

Frank rocks forward on his feet, trying to put himself closer to Gerard as discreetly as possible. “I’m patient.”

“It just doesn’t  _ mean _ anything,” Gerard finally says. “It has no reason to exist.”

“I don’t think that’s true.” One side of Frank’s mouth lifts. “Maybe it does. Maybe it exists so that I can like it. And I really do like what I’m seeing.”

“I don’t make art to impress people,” Gerard says automatically, until his eyes drop further down Frank’s face and he seems to put two and two together. “Oh, wait. Did you mean—?”

“Only if you do,” Frank says, voice coming out breathier than he’d intended. Hesitantly, with fingers feather-light, he wraps a hand around the side of Gerard’s neck. Gerard’s eyes grow wider, but he doesn’t back away.

“I guess you figured out why I invited you back here,” Gerard murmurs. Frank moves his hand around so he can play with the hair at the back of Gerard’s neck, and Gerard’s eyelids flutter. For the first time in so long, Frank can’t believe his fucking luck.

He lets his eyes slip closed, pulse hammering so hard it’s on the backs of his eyelids as dancing red dots. They’re close, now, close enough to feel Gerard’s breath on his lips, and it’s so sweet he can almost taste it.

Loud and insistent, something bangs on the door. A voice yells, “Gerard, are you in there?”

“Shit.” Gerard reels back so fast that their foreheads nearly collide. “Fuck, Frank, I promised everyone that if they needed me I would—”

“It’s fine,” Frank says, ignoring the sinking feeling in his stomach that’s screaming the exact opposite. “Go help.”

“Okay, yeah. Fuck, sorry.” A few of Gerard’s worry lines smooth over, but not all of them. “And you’ll…?”

“Stay right here.” Frank urges himself to smile and hopes it doesn’t come off as forced as it feels. “Just don’t take too long, okay?”

“Yes. Okay. I won’t.” Gerard sounds pretty dazed. He misses the doorknob the first time he reaches for it and has to try again before he can slip back into the main room. Frank watches him go, only letting himself sigh once the door swings shut. Damnit. He’d been so close.

He patters around the small room for a minute, idly looking at the art and trying not to sulk too hard. Out front, Mikey is probably already halfway in that bartender’s pants. Frank can’t even get a guy to stick around long enough to kiss him.

He curses and rubs a hand over his face, trying to shake it off. Gerard will be back in a minute, and then he can try again. And it’ll work that time. Maybe. Fuck, he needs a cigarette. 

If he walks back through the main room, it’s definitely going to look like he’s trying to ditch Gerard, so Frank looks around until he spots a back door blending into the grey wall. If this is already the back of the building, it surely leads outside. He digs around in his pocket for his pack and shakes out a cigarette as he pushes the door open with his shoulder.

The air has gotten even colder since he and Mikey had walked down here, so Frank pulls his jacket tighter around himself and shields the flame as he lights up. That first inhale is the sort of warm familiarity he needs, and he falls into his usual rhythm quickly. It’s only once he’s down to the filter that he realizes that if Gerard isn’t a smoker, Frank has just made himself a thousand times less appealing to kiss.

Fuck, of  _ course. _ Fuck his mindless habits. Fuck his dead-end luck. He grinds the butt under his heel and hits his head against the brick wall behind him, just for good measure. He rummages around in his pockets, futilely hoping to find gum or breath mints or  _ something, _ but comes up short.

Oh well. If Gerard doesn’t smoke, then it probably wasn’t meant to be, he tells himself. It does nothing to calm the sick feeling rolling over in his stomach.

He pushes the door back open, letting a cold gust of air follow him in. The scent of smoke clings to him oddly strong. He doesn’t notice Gerard standing in the middle of the room, so he sweeps his gaze around, trying to see if he’s hidden in the shadows or just not back yet. Then his eyes land on where the paintings had just been, and his heart nearly stops.

Every single one of them is burnt to a crisp, only measly piles of ashes left in their wake.

“What the fuck?” he says too loudly, his eyes and brain unable to reconcile what they’re taking in. “What the  _ fuck?” _

Behind him, the door swings open. “Sorry that took so long, a couple of the artists needed—” Gerard stops cold, and Frank doesn’t have to look at him to imagine the shock on his face. “Frank?” he says. “What the hell happened to my paintings?”

*

Frank chokes back a gasp as his knees hit the sidewalk and the freezing metal of handcuffs dig into his wrists. It’s cliche, but he’s going to say it anyway. “I was — I was framed, okay!”

“You have the right to remain silent,” the officer intones monotonously. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you? With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?”

“It wasn’t me.” Frank tries to twist around, but the cuffs bite into his skin. “I wasn’t even in the room, I was—”

The officer yanks him off of the ground and starts to pull him towards the police car parked against the curb. The crowd that had formed earlier had been dispersed, but Frank can still imagine Gerard watching him through the window, mouth twisted with disgust. God, Frank hopes that Mikey didn’t stick around to see this. 

“Look, kid.” The officer opens the car door and shoves him in. “Security cameras in the gallery saw you go in, and then the neighbor’s cameras caught you behind the building with a lighter. No one else was there.”

Frank knows he should really shut his mouth, but, “How can you know it was me if there aren’t any cameras in the back room?”

“You can take that one up with a judge.” With a roll of his eyes, the officer shuts the door in his face, effectively ending the conversation.

They set his bail and offer him a phone call. Frank stares at the dial pad for a long minute. Both of his parents are out of town for the rest of the month, and there’s no way in hell they’re going to rush home from the Caribbean just to come save their fuck-up of a son. He can’t disappoint them again.

With trembling fingers, he dials Mikey.

“It’s Frank,” he breathes out as soon as he hears the other end click and connect. “Mikey, I swear it wasn’t me, you know I wouldn’t—”

“Who else could it be?” Mikey sounds heartbroken. It twists in Frank’s gut like a knife. “I’m sorry, Frank.” 

The line goes dead.

Frank falls forward until his forehead hits the wall. Fuck.

*

It’s cold, it’s dark, and it smells vaguely of piss, but at least Frank is alone in his cell. He closes his eyes and pulls his knees up to his chest on the bench. Even with nothing actively disturbing him, he knows there’s no way he’s going to drift off.

He tries anyway. He skips over counting sheep, because that bullshit has never once worked, and heads straight into rhythmic breathing. Every time he feels his pulse slow down, though, he’s hit with another reminder that he’s in a  _ jail cell. _ And that Mikey wants nothing to do with him. And that he finally met a great guy, and he totally blew it.

Frank has fucked up a lot of first impressions in his life, but being framed for arson is definitely a new one.

He counts backward from one hundred but jolts himself out of relaxation by accident when it starts to feel like he’s free-falling. He leans his head further back against the wall and exhales slowly. Maybe if he wills himself to sleep hard enough, his brain will just give up on keeping him awake.

He screws his eyes shut tighter until the blackness behind them starts to swirl, and his stomach drops familiarly, like his body is trying to trick him into thinking he’s falling again. He ignores it and keeps his eyes shut, forcing himself to stay still.

The churning darkness gets deeper; Frank knows, somehow, even though he can’t exactly see it. The knot in his gut tightens until it’s almost unbearable, but he refuses to give into it. It pulls, and he pulls back.

A searing bolt of pain rips down his spine, so white-hot that he actually gasps out loud. Arching, his eyes shoot open. It doesn’t matter where he is; no wink of sleep is worth that.

That’s when he realizes that he’s not sitting anymore. 

He’s also not in the police station. He’s standing in the middle of a dirt road, and someone is yelling at him.

His eyes flash around, desperately trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. People are streaming by, all headed in the same direction down the road. On his left is a fruit stand, set up haphazardly on a leaning table. The people hovering around it are talking loudly, and they’re all dressed like they’re about to go to a toga party. To the right is some sort of stone structure with an orange, paneled roof, and — he looks down — he’s wearing sandals? Last time he checked, he didn’t even  _ own _ sandals.

Oh. He’s also wearing one of the togas. His is off-white, matching a few of the people nearby. It fits a hell of a lot better than the bedsheet he wrapped around himself that one time in freshman year he and Mikey decided to try out frat parties. That might be sort of cool, he supposes, if he had any idea where in hell the clothing  _ came from. _

“Figs! Three drachmae!” Frank belatedly realizes that he’s still being hollered at. He turns in the direction of the voice and is met with the grizzled face of an old man making direct eye contact and shaking a basket of purple fruit in a manner that is probably supposed to be enticing. He shakes his head and steps back, but the man yells it again.

“No thanks,” Frank says, then freezes. He hadn’t thought twice before speaking, but the way his tongue formed the syllables felt nothing like English. He tries it again, just to make sure, but gets the exact same results. He’s not multilingual — that’s Mikey. And he’s certainly not well versed enough in any other language to speak it without even meaning to.

He listens closer to the conversations happening at the fruit stand and realizes that those aren’t in English, either, even though he can understand them like it’s his native tongue. His bewildered gaze accidentally lands on the fig man again, and Fig Man takes it as another opportunity to shout, “Three drachmae!” 

Someone jostles Frank’s shoulder, and he stumbles, barely managing to right himself before he hits the ground. Fig Man is shooting him angry looks now, probably for leading him on without coughing up any cash; he starts to step forward, and Frank panics. Before he can think about it too hard, he lets the crowd of people sweep him away from the fruit stand, joining in on their mass migration to wherever.

Drachmae. Sandals. Togas. Frank starts to piece things together as he shuffles along in the dust. Apparently, his subconscious has decided to take him to ancient Greece for the weirdest lucid dream ever.

If this is a lucid dream, Frank supposes he could probably wake himself up. All that’s waiting for him on the other side, though, is a dark cell. That’s enough to keep him moving forward. Whatever his brain can cook up here, it can’t be worse than reality.

Inspecting the people around him closer, Frank notices that nearly all of them are carrying things like pottery jugs or fruits or — in one guy’s case — a live goat. It bleats when Frank stares at it. Just when he’d thought shit couldn’t get any weirder. 

Before long, the road starts to incline and gives way to a winding path up a hill. Frank’s calves start to cramp just looking at it. Still, he follows the crowd. The stone steps cut into the hillside are far apart and unforgiving, but he somehow manages. Strange, considering the fact that he normally can’t even make it up the six flights of stairs to his dorm without his damned smoker’s lungs trying to forcibly eject themselves from his body.

Trees close in on either side of the mass of people, directing them the right way. They’re unlike any kind of tree that Frank has seen in Jersey before; the trunks are thin and light, and the leaves look almost metallic as they move in the wind. Frank leans closer to one and catches a glimpse of — oh. They’re olive trees.

By now, his legs are actually starting to ache. He pushes onto his tiptoes, but despite the changes in outfit and language, he’s still just as short as ever; with all the trees around now, there’s no way he’s getting a look at what’s ahead. Following blindly it is, then.

The hot sun combined with the climb is just edging towards unbearable when the crowd suddenly spreads out. He cranes his neck up as the scene opens up in front of him, and he almost can’t believe what he sees. Even in his dreams, he recognizes it: the Parthenon.

It’s not the Parthenon he remembers seeing in textbooks, though. For some reason, his subconscious has decided to paint it in lustrous shades of blue, red, and gold. None of the cracks and crumbles are there, either; it rises in front of him like a palace come down from the heavens. 

A smattering of people have stopped in their tracks, but he follows the part of the crowd that is funneling into a hall of columns, something like an entryway. They pack in like sardines, the hot press of bodies making Frank’s heat flush even worse. He can’t remember if his dreams are always this physically vivid. Maybe they are; maybe he just forgets when he wakes up. 

After a minute of moving along at a snail’s pace and dodging the curious mouth of that damn goat, Frank gives up on the guise of politeness and starts to use his elbows. He may be short, but he’s been to more than enough gigs to have this trick down. People mutter and curse at him as he fights his way towards the front, but he doesn’t give a fuck — he can finally  _ see. _

There, in front of the massive shadow of the Parthenon, is a short but elaborately engraved column. Behind it stands someone in a red and white toga who is collecting whatever offerings people have hauled up this godforsaken hill in exchange for a few words. 

Frank suddenly understands what the goat is for, and the vegetarian in him shudders.  _ Gross. _

The line shifts, and everyone steps closer to the Parthenon. Frank’s almost at the front. It’s now clear that the person collecting sacrifices is a man. 

He blinks, and then he blinks again.

A man who looks exactly like Gerard.

When he wakes up, Frank and his subconscious are going to have a firm talk. Because dreams are allowed to be weird, dreams are supposed to be weird, but conjuring up storylines about someone he’s met exactly  _ once _ while he’s in  _ prison _ is just  _ too weird. _

And suddenly, he’s next in line.

The couple in front of him finishes handing over their jug of wine and murmuring in low tones to Gerard, and then he says something that makes them smile and nod. Frank might have listened had he not been so focused on the anxious, cramping sensation in his stomach.

Gerard beckons him forward as soon as the couple is gone, not even looking up. Frank walks towards him. He doesn’t see much choice.

“Gerard?” he asks once he’s close enough to speak quietly. It’s still unsettling to hear the Greek come out of his mouth. He figures this is his safest bet; surely his brain wouldn’t be cruel enough to make a version of Gerard that doesn’t even  _ recognize _ him.

Gerard very pointedly looks at Frank’s face and then down at his empty hands. “Do you bring anything for our patron goddess Athena?”

“Gerard, it’s me,” Frank tries again. The desperation in his voice makes him cringe, even though this is a fucking  _ dream. _ “Frank. We met at your gallery last night.” The real Gerard would never forget that. He got dragged out of that place in cuffs.

Gerard’s eyes grow twice as wide, and he looks at Frank like he’s really taking him in for the first time. “A gallery?”

“Your gallery,” says Frank, gesturing. “You know, like, a place where they hang art? A collection?”

“I know what a gallery is,” Gerard hisses, casting a furtive glance to the rest of the crowd in line behind Frank. “Fuck. Come on.”

Before Frank can get a single question out, Gerard’s got him by the forearm and is dragging him, okay, wow,  _ into _ the Parthenon. 

“Don’t tell anyone about this, we’re technically not supposed to bring people in here,” Gerard mutters as he leads Frank past an outer ring of columns and into a long, open hallway. Frank tries to look around, but Gerard grabs him by the shoulders and makes him meet his eyes. “What era are you from?”

“Excuse me?” Frank wiggles a little bit, but Gerard’s grip doesn’t loosen. What the fuck does that mean,  _ era? _ Who talks like that? “Um, I don’t know, modern? Twenty-first century?”

Gerard drops his hands and takes an entire step back. “Then how did you get  _ here?” _

Frank opens his mouth to answer, even though he has no idea what he’s going to say. Before he can try, though, Gerard rambles on, “No, that shouldn’t be possible. That’s too much time. That’s — that’s—” He breaks off, tugging on his hair at the ends. “That’s two and a half thousand years!”

If Frank had the slightest clue as to what the fuck is going on, he might have some kind of answer. As it is, though, all he can say is, “Look, man, I don’t know how—”

Gerard holds up a hand, and Frank immediately shuts up. “If you came from the twenty-first century era,” he says slowly, “then something has gone horribly wrong.”

Frank’s about to mention how the whole being-in-jail thing is pretty not great, but the stricken look on Gerard’s face makes him bite his tongue. There’s serious, and then there’s  _ serious. _

“Frank,” Gerard starts, all fake-calm. The way his chin twitches belies him. “In the time you come from, where is the Athena Parthenos?” 

Alright, Frank is trying his best to go along with this crazy shit, but he’s going to need more help than that. “The what?”

“The  _ Athena Parthenos.” _ Gerard points to the end of the hall, and for the first time Frank turns his head and sees a gold and ivory statue of a stern-looking woman holding some winged chick in her hand. It’s breathtaking, in a looming, sinister sort of way. It’s also  _ gigantic.  _ “The sculpture that this temple was built to protect. Where is it in your time?”

“How the fuck should I know?” Frank shrugs uselessly. “I live in America.”

Gerard’s entire face draws together. “What’s America?”

Oh, god. If Gerard was disappointed that Frank couldn’t explain things before, he’s in for an even bigger letdown now. Luckily, though, Gerard just flaps a hand at his stunned silence. “Okay. At least tell me what happened to the Parthenon in your era.”

Frank feels his face light up, because finally, he actually has relevant information to contribute. He took an ancient history class once. (And failed the exam. Not that he’s going to tell Gerard that.) “The Venetians blew it up.” He may not remember much, but explosions will always stick in his head.

“What?” Gerard makes a noise like he’s being strangled and looks at Frank wildly. “No, you’re lying. Tell me you’re lying.”

Frank puts both hands out in front of him, both as a defense and a placation. “Uh.”

“Fuck! No, that can’t — if that happens, then I—”

Frank puts a hand on Gerard’s shoulder, but he somehow gets even tenser. “Gerard, hey! Gerard. Slow down. Tell me what—”

Outside of the temple, a chorus of screams goes up. Gerard pulls away from Frank immediately, head snapping towards the noise and feet close behind, running out before Frank can even get the beginnings of a straight fucking answer. 

By the time Frank gets out there too, Gerard is on his knees shaking a teenage boy who is lying limp on the ground. Next to him is another body. And another. And another. Frank’s stomach turns over. The entire crowd is sprawled out at uncomfortable angles, eyes shut and motionless, like a massacre without any blood.

“He’s still breathing,” Gerard says shakily, his hand on the boy’s chest. 

Frank reaches over and tests the old woman lying nearby. Her chest moves shallowly, but at least it moves. “She is too.”

Gerard sits back on his heels, his face stormy and troubled. “They all look like they are. I don’t think anyone died. I don’t see any injuries either.”

“That’s good,” Frank says, not really meaning it. There are unconscious bodies as far as he can see, all the way back to the olive grove that he trekked through earlier.

“Yeah.” Gerard distractedly feels the teenage boy’s forehead. “Yeah, that’s good, I just — I don’t know how this could have happened. How this many people could have just…”

“Collapsed,” Frank finishes, and Gerard finally looks over at him. Something passes between them, even if Frank can’t tell what it is.

_ BOOM. _

The earth shakes. Frank looks behind them just in time to watch the entire Parthenon rattle, dust coming out of all sides. He blinks against the cloud of grime and waits for the entire structure to crumble, but it doesn’t. He looks over at Gerard and notices that his mouth is moving. He can’t hear him, though, having gone detonation-deaf in the aftermath of whatever just happened.

“Frank!” he finally catches, but it sounds like it’s coming from underwater. Gerard is trying to pull him up, but he can’t get his legs to work; the first time he stands up, they buckle, and Gerard just barely grabs him before he hits the ground like all the bodies around them. After a couple of tries, they get moving, Gerard’s arm wrapped around Frank’s shoulder and Frank’s arm around Gerard’s waist.

“The pillars were made to absorb a certain level of shock,” he hears Gerard say distantly. “But inside—”

He sees it as soon as they step foot in the temple. At the end of the hall, where the striking Athena Parthenos should be, is a pile of rubble. There’s no one else in sight. Whoever is to blame is long gone.

“No,” Gerard breathes out, so completely shattered that it hurts to hear. “No, no,  _ no.” _ He rushes forward, almost dropping Frank in his haste, and falls to his knees in front of the remains. With both hands, he cradles a fragment, now nothing more than a lump of ivory. “This can’t be happening, this can’t be—”

Frank has no idea what the protocol for this kind of situation is. As much as he hates reality right now, he sort of wishes he would wake up already. Gently, he rests a hand between Gerard’s shoulder blades. Gerard’s head jerks over to him like he’d just remembered Frank was there. “We have to find whoever did this,” Gerard says, suddenly fierce in his misery. 

Frank suggests the first thing that comes into his head. “Well, yeah. It’s a long way down from here, so they’re probably still on the hill. And even if they’re not, I doubt they’re out of town yet.”

“I didn’t mean in Greece. We’re not going to find them here.” Rising, Gerard brushes some of the dust off of his toga. His body is rigid; there’s a scary power radiating off of him. “I meant in time. Whoever did this, they weren’t from here. And now that they’re done, they’re definitely gone from this era.”

“What the fuck do you mean,  _ in time? _ Wasn’t that just some Greek?”

Gerard fixes him with a flooring stare. “No Greek would try to pick a fight with the goddess of war.”

Frank swallows hard. He can’t help it. “I take it that it wasn’t the Venetians, either.”

“You said they blew up the Parthenon, not just the statue,” Gerard says. “No, this is — you coming here, my post getting blown to pieces — that doesn’t just  _ happen, _ Frank.”

“So then what do we do now?” Frank’s throat catches. “Wait, your post? What does that mean?”

“I don’t have the strength for big jumps.” Gerard’s talking fast, fidgeting a little, like his brain is working too quickly for his mouth to keep up. “I can only make it to my next post. I need you to meet me there, okay?”

“Uh, what?”  _ Meet him there? And again — post? _ “Gerard, I don’t — I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know how to  _ do _ that.”

Gerard scrunches his eyebrows. “Sure you do. That’s how you got here.”

“I didn’t do anything to get here.” He’d just been sitting in his cell. All he’d wanted was to get some damn sleep.

“Fine, okay, I’ll help you out.” Gerard huffs. It makes a strand of his hair flutter. “I need your hands.”

Frank holds out both his palms, trying to suppress the sensation that zings down his spine when Gerard takes them. Gerard closes his eyes, and after a second, Frank realizes that he probably should too. “Take a deep breath,” Gerard says lowly. “Think about where we’re going. Where we want to end up.”

Frank’s about to open his mouth and say how he doesn’t even know  _ where _ they’re going, much less how this is supposed to get them there, when he feels it — the familiar tug on the back of his neck and through his vertebrae, less painful this time around but just as insistent. He inhales sharply as darkness overtakes him.

A second later, he’s drenched in water. 

He splutters and stumbles forward, trying to gain his bearings. The waterfall pouring down on him disappears and is replaced by the blazing sun in his eyes, and it’s a miracle he doesn’t hit the ground. “Gerard? Gerard!”

“I’m here,” Gerard calls, sounding close. After a few more blinks, Frank’s eyes finally focus. Right next to him, Gerard is equally as soaked. 

“Fountain,” Gerard rasps, and Frank turns to see the looming structure that they’d just escaped from. In the center of it is a sculpture of a man, smaller statues surrounding it and spitting out water. The same water that is now conveniently dripping down Frank’s face. “Sorry about that,” Gerard continues as he wrings out his hair. “Sometimes there are…displacement issues.” 

And woah, okay, Gerard looks different. Not in the face, necessarily, but he’s in a horrendous, long black jacket with a puffy white collar at the top. Frank feels a weird tickling on his neck and realizes that he’s in a very similar outfit; he reaches up to touch the collar and, _ what the fuck, _ his hair is as long as Gerard’s.

“Displacement issues? That’s what you’re calling it?” Frank shakes his head like a dog and water flies left and right. Water from his  _ long hair. _ Fuck. “What just  _ happened,  _ Gerard?”

“We jumped,” Gerard says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world, and gestures to their surroundings. Bewildered, Frank turns to look. They’re in the middle of some sort of town square. People are bustling past, ducking in and out of rust-colored buildings. Frank won’t pretend to be an expert on ancient Greece, but this sure as hell isn’t it. 

The strangest part of it all, though, is how  _ tangible  _ it all is. He can feel the breeze through his wet, ugly clothes and the smell — crisp, but with the grimy undertone that all cities carry — is impossibly distinctive. Plus, whatever he’s speaking now, it’s not English or Greek. There’s no way his subconscious knows this many languages. 

His voice cracks, but he pushes the words out. “This isn’t a dream, is it?”

Gerard opens his mouth to answer, then promptly crumples to the ground. 

“Jesus Christ,” Frank mutters. He just can’t catch a fucking break. He drops to his knees and gets both hands on Gerard’s shoulders, shaking. Gerard makes a pitiful noise but doesn’t move.

“Hey. C’mon.” Frank shakes him a little harder. They really need to get off the street already; there aren’t any cars, but the sheer amount of foot traffic may still flatten them. “Seriously. You can’t just dump me in some random town and then pass out on me.”

The guilt trip must work, whether subliminally or not, because Gerard finally opens one eye. Without thinking, Frank reaches forward and brushes the hair off of his forehead. 

“Fuck.” It’s somewhere between a groan and a hiss. Gerard tries to sit up, but he has to stop halfway and put his head in both hands, moaning like it’s splitting open. “That one — that one’s always the worst one. God, that hurt.”

Frank means to be patient, he really does, but he only makes it about thirty seconds before saying, “You have a lot of explaining to do, dude.”

“In a minute,” Gerard manages, head now firmly between his knees. Bypassers are still leaving a decent-sized berth around them, but they’ve begun to point and chatter. Frank wishes they were back in his dorm or something, where he’s got cold compresses and enough painkillers to fell a giant. But no, he’s here — wherever  _ here _ actually is — supplyless and very much confused.

“Alright.” Gerard lets out a deep breath and tilts his face up. Some of the color has come back into his cheeks. “Help me up.”

“If I do,” Frank says pointedly, standing, “I’m expecting some explanations.”

Gerard nods and sticks a hand out for Frank to grab. Frank was going to help him either way, but Gerard doesn’t need to know that. Once they’re both upright, Gerard has to lean against Frank’s front for a second and breathe. Frank stands very still and tries not to do anything incriminating.

Honestly, he wants to be angry, he  _ should _ be angry, that Gerard is dragging him around and spontaneously collapsing in this fucked-up dream-that-no-longer-seems-like-a-dream. In the empty spot where that emotion should be, though, all he finds is confusion and concern. “Okay now?”

“Yeah,” Gerard says quietly, peeling himself off of Frank despite their wet clothes’ resistance. There’s a water droplet in his eyelashes that Frank kind of wants to touch. “Yeah, thank you.”

“Great.” Discovering that his soaked overcoat has pockets, Frank shoves his hands in to keep them to himself. “Care to tell me where we are, then?”

Gerard thinks for half a second. “Rome, Italy. Fifteen twelve.”

“Fifteen—” Exactly zero things in Frank’s life make sense anymore. He supposes he’ll just have to accept that. “How did we go from  _ ancient Greece _ to  _ Rome?” _

Gerard bites his lip. “That explanation…is not as simple.”

Frank tilts his chin up, stubborn. “Tell me anyway.”

There’s a moment of visible conflict on Gerard’s face before he relents. “Fine, but we’re going to have to walk and talk. We have places to be.”

“We do?” Frank asks, but Gerard’s already stepping forward and blending into the crowd. He’s moving kind of quickly for someone who had just been a lump on the ground; Frank has to speed walk to catch up. Whatever, he didn’t want to be near that damn fountain anymore anyway. 

“So I’m a Keeper,” Gerard says as they weave through a hoard of people. Frank just blinks at him. Running a hand over his face, Gerard tries again. “That’s short for Timekeeper. Sorry. I haven’t explained this to anyone in like, a millennium. Timekeepers are — well, it’s kind of what it sounds like. We keep time in order. We make sure that the right events happen so that the future stays on track.”

Even though Frank definitely wants to hear where that’s going, he has to interrupt. “Sorry,  _ we?” _

“Yeah, there’s a bunch of us.” Gerard flails a hand, then starts to count on his fingers. “There’s one of us for each of the major worldly influences. I know it sounds pretentious, asshole, don’t raise your eyebrows. I’m Keeper of the Arts. There’s also science, that’s Ray, and politics is Lindsey. Pete does literature. Patrick’s on music. Brendon’s got religion. Gabe does philosophy. My brother, Mikey, was assigned language.”

“Wait.” Frank trips over his tongue as he tries to string a sentence together.  _ “Mikey?” _

Gerard gives him a weird look. “You know him?”

“Uh, yes.” Mother _ fucker. _ If Mikey is the Keeper of Language, or whatever the fuck, then it’s no wonder he’s always showing Frank up in their History of the English Language class. It would also explain his improbable ability to speak fluently in everything from German to Portuguese while having the study habits of an overgrown sloth. But Gerard should know that Frank knows Mikey. Mikey was the reason they had  _ met. _ Gerard had treated him like a stranger back at the Parthenon, but surely that wasn’t actually…

“Gerard,” he says carefully, keeping his face neutral. “Do you know who I am?”

Gerard looks at him sideways. “Yeah? Frank. We met in Greece.”

“No.” Frank’s chest hurts all of a sudden. “No, we didn’t.”

“We didn’t — oh, god.” Gerard winces like he’d just had a latent realization. “Frank, I swear I’m not trying to be a dick. It’s complicated.” 

“Complicated? Then explain.”

A moment passes, and for a second, Frank really thinks he’s going to have to deck Gerard. But then Gerard caves.

“Okay, so we just went from ancient Greece to the Italian Renaissance, right? I call that jumping. What it really means is jumping from one of my posts to the next — all of the worldly influences have posts, which are basically positions in time that we’re assigned because they’re significant to whatever our influence is. Since I’m one of the lesser influences, I have fewer posts to jump between.”

Frank cuts in. “Lesser?” He doesn’t really like the sound of that.

“Yeah, it depends on how many people believe in your influence, or participate in it.” Gerard doesn’t seem offended by this structure, so Frank lets his eyebrows unfurrow. “Like, science and politics have posts basically every century because more people in modern times participate in them. Mine are more spaced out, though. The longer the distance I have to cover in a jump, the more it takes out of me.” He turns sheepish. “Hence why I passed out on you back there.”

It’s good to know that Gerard isn’t just, like, anemic, but, “What has this got to do with you forgetting about me?”

“I’m getting there.” They dodge a crowd that’s congregated around some sort of outdoor shop. Frank still has no clue where they’re headed. “There’s another reason I passed out. Whenever I arrive somewhere new, my brain sort of has to…recalibrate. It’s meshing together old knowledge and new knowledge. Versions of me exist at each of my posts; when I switch from one to another, I’m not actually moving my body. I’m just transferring my psyche from one life to the next. Does that make sense?”

Frank starts to nod, then freezes. “Wait — why don’t I have to recalibrate, or whatever?”

“Because you didn’t make the jump.” Gerard shoots him a look that clearly reads as envy. “You’re just along for the ride.”

“Oh.” Frank feels a pang of guilt. “Alright, that makes sense.”

“Good.” Gerard dips his head. “Anyway. The way it works is that my psyche starts at my earliest post, so to speak. I can’t connect them unless I jump from one era to another, and even then, it only keeps my memories when I go forward in time. So, theoretically, I could move this psyche forward in time to my next post, but I couldn’t move my psyche from your era back to where we are now without forgetting everything that’s happened. If I do go backward, I split my psyche back apart into its respective eras and lose all recent memories.”

It’s a lot of information, and Frank takes a second to process. “You mean that because I met you in the twenty-first century, you don’t remember me in this place?”

“Right. I only have my memories from Athens, plus whatever I had in my Renaissance brain.”

“And a version of you exists in all these different eras.” Frank pinches the bridge of his nose. “Sure. Because that’s not totally fucking insane.”

Gerard waves a hand in front of his chest. “It’s not just me. You people think about time travel all wrong. It’s not about moving yourself through time. It’s about  _ finding _ yourself in time. A version of everyone exists in every era.”

Frank misses a step and has to catch himself before he faceplants on the cobblestone. “Wait, there are different versions of me? Are you serious?”

Gerard furrows his eyebrows at him. “Well, whose body did you think you’d transferred into?”

Suddenly appalled, Frank tries to hold both his arms as far away from himself as possible before remembering that they’re attached to him. “You mean this is some random Italian dude’s body?”

“Don’t act so disgusted. It’s  _ your _ body.” Gerard rolls his eyes. “Just an earlier version of you.”

“Oh, that’s so fucking freaky.” A stricken look passes over Frank’s face as something dawns on him. “I don’t have any tattoos!”

“No one around here does,” Gerard points out. Then, as an afterthought, “What do you normally look like?”

“Not this frilly, that’s for damn sure.” For emphasis, Frank pulls on the dumb white dress collar around his neck. It’s barely damp now after being in the sun. “And you don’t either, for the record.”

“Huh.” Gerard’s lips press into a line, like he doesn’t know if he should take that as a compliment. 

They turn a corner, and Frank abruptly has a thought. “Hang on, if we’re at one of your posts, then that means there’s a big art event here, right? Are we going to see the Mona Lisa?”

Gerard looks sideways at him. “Don’t be cliche.”

*

“Jesus,” Frank murmurs involuntarily, then clamps his mouth shut as he realizes that this is definitely not the place for blasphemy.

But Gerard doesn’t call him out for it, thankfully, just says, “I know,” in a dreamy voice. Together they stare up at the incredible feat of architecture before them. The Sistine Chapel sits proud and tall, simple columns in front of many doors and a dome in the very back, a cross cutting its shape out of the sky at the top. Frank is pretty damn far from ever reverting back to Catholicism, but he’s man enough to admit when he’s impressed.

A place like this shouldn’t just let anyone in, Frank’s no idiot. When they step past the columns, though, a robed priest in front of a door merely nods Gerard through without so much as a second glance. Bewildered, but not stupid enough to hesitate, Frank hurries after him; whatever magic Gerard just pulled out of his ass, he’s positive he can’t replicate it.

“How did you do that?” he whispers. They’re the only ones in the chapel, but Frank feels like if he raises his voice, it’ll echo off the walls and the priest outside will hear and throw them to the curb.

“Um.” Gerard is fidgety all of a sudden. “You know how I said that every body we move our psyche into is a different version of ourselves? Those versions of us aren’t just here as shells, they’re real people. They’ve got real lives.” Gerard gestures down at himself. “In this life, I’m a Medici. They’re basically the most powerful patron family in Italy right now.”

“Oh.” Frank isn’t entirely sure what to make of that. “So you’re, like, famous?”

“I guess in this era, yeah.” Gerard shrugs uncomfortably. “It’s not — I don’t love talking about it. It just makes my job easier as a Keeper. The Medicis like to be patrons of the arts, and I’m here to keep this era’s art timeline in order. We have some common interests.”

“I wonder who I am in this life,” Frank wonders aloud, then looks up. “Hey, isn’t this place supposed to be covered in a bunch of Jesus paintings?”

Gerard looks up too, and the spark in his eyes goes out as he sees the ceiling. It’s just a field of stars painted against a blue sky; again, Frank doesn’t know shit about art, but he’s pretty sure this isn’t right.

“Did someone paint over it?” Frank asks.

“No,” Gerard says, already sounding heartbroken. “These stars were the original design for the chapel. But there should be fresco all over the walls and ceiling.”

“Then where is it?”

“It’s nowhere,” says Gerard. “Michelangelo never painted it in the first place.”

“How?” Frank spins around, as if the explanation will be spelled out for him on the opposite wall. “Are we too early?”

“It took him until fifteen twelve. Four years in total,” Gerard says miserably. “We’re right on time.”

“Then why—” Something clicks, but it seems too far-fetched to be correct. “This doesn’t have anything to do with that Athena sculpture, does it?”

Gerard shrugs one shoulder. “That was my guess.”

“But that was so long ago,” Frank reasons. “You said that was your longest jump out of all your posts. How could a different artist in a different country God knows how many years ago actually affect what some dude in Italy paints?”

“The Renaissance drew inspiration directly from the ancients,” says Gerard. “Everything’s connected. It isn’t just art history. Art  _ is _ history. Art  _ is _ culture. Without the crucial backbones, it all disappears. So when one timeline gets messed up—” He looks despairingly up at the painted stars, which wink back at him mockingly. “—it  _ all _ goes down.”

“Come on, not  _ all _ of it.” The chapel does look bleak, but Frank is positive that Gerard is being dramatic. “Sure, the Sistine Chapel is out. But there’s no way that the destruction of one statue eliminated all of the Renaissance art in Rome.”

Gerard sighs. He can’t seem to look away from the ceiling. “I guess not.”

“So if you were an art criminal in sixteenth century Italy, what would you try to blow up next?”

“I don’t know. Almost all of the influential Renaissance art came out of Florence, and that’s — it would take us days to get there.” Gerard considers that in silent misery for a moment before a lightbulb goes off. “Pieta. The Pieta. If Michelangelo ever sculpted it, it should have been finished thirteen years ago.”

“So we find that,” Frank says.

*

They’re too late. In the back of the Chapel of Santa Petronilla sits a wide pedestal, and on top of it, a pile of rubble.

“Why?” Gerard whispers. He reaches out to touch what was once the Pieta, but draws back before he makes contact. Frank isn’t sure if it’s out of fear or respect. “Who would do this?”

Frank doesn’t say anything. It doesn’t add up; the art is being destroyed, not stolen. It’s not like someone is trying to build the ultimate collection or make quick money on the black market.

“I don’t know what to do now.” Gerard’s voice is so shattered it squeezes the air out of Frank’s lungs. “I can’t — I don’t have enough strength in me for another jump today. It could kill me.”

“Your Medici guy, the person you are here,” Frank says. “Does he have a home?”

“Yeah.” Gerard swipes a hand over his eye. Fuck, is he crying? Frank is so far out of his element.

“Okay,” says Frank for the lack of anything better. “Then let’s go home.”

*

The Medici family, it turns out, are no fucking joke. Not only can they get into important chapels unquestioned, but their house is  _ huge.  _ Gerard has to lead Frank down three different hallways to show him to his room, and even the guest quarters are twice the size of Frank’s entire dorm. 

“I’ll make dinner,” Gerard says. “We’re the only ones here right now, so just show up whenever you’re hungry, okay?”

“Dude.” Frank skates his gaze over lavish furniture and the garden right outside his window. Green vines crawl all over it, and in the distance he can see the shining bulbs of ripening fruit. “I don’t even know if I’ll be able to  _ find _ the kitchen.”

Thankfully, he manages in the end and only gets lost once. The two of them sit at a long, wooden table. Frank gets the feeling that dining at opposite ends would be the proper thing to do, but he plops down next to Gerard anyway. This isn’t his era. He doesn’t have to follow all the rules.

The two of them sit in silence for a little while. Frank gets the feeling that Gerard is wallowing, switching back and forth between blaming himself and some unknown force for the destruction of what he holds dear. But self-pity never solves anything, Frank knows that much. He takes the conversation, or lack thereof, into his own hands.

“Alright, so, question,” he says through a mouthful of his dinner. They’re having an unlikely combination of onion soup and fish. Renaissance food is weird. 

Gerard gives him a side-eye. “Do you have any table manners?” 

Frank opens his mouth to bitch back at him, then decides that if he’s going to get anywhere with this version of Gerard, he might have to comply with the Medici standard. He waits until he’s finished chewing before continuing. “Have you been to the future?”

Gerard peers at him over the rim of his wine glass. “Which future?”

“My future. Whatever happens after the twenty-first century.”

“Probably. But if I have, I wouldn’t be able to remember it right now.”

“Oh. There goes my next question, then.” Frank frowns, and Gerard raises an eyebrow at him. “I was going to ask about fate.”

Gerard waves a dismissive hand in the air. His wine sloshes. “That’s all bullshit. We make our future.”

“See, there’s another thing.” Frank has given up being polite and is now narrowly avoiding spraying soup everywhere. Whatever. There are too many pressing questions to worry about etiquette. “You just said ‘bullshit.’ I know you said you only have memories from now and the past, but you talk like you’re from my time.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, actually, because it also struck me as odd.” Gerard levels a finger at him. “I’m pretty sure it’s your fault.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re influencing me,” Gerard says simply. “Your era’s speech patterns are dominating Renaissance speech patterns, so we talk like that instead.”

“Then why are we still speaking—” Frank has to think for a second. “—Italian?”

Gerard shrugs. “That’s more of a Mikey question.”

Fuck, Mikey. Every time Frank thinks about that particular bit of news, his head starts to spin. Time to distract himself with another question. “Where did all you Keepers… _ come _ from? Have you been here forever? How come no one knows you exist?”

“The last part I can answer. It’s because unless you travel through time with us hunting down an art destroying criminal, well, we don’t  _ tell _ you. To maintain the peace. As for the rest, that’s more tricky,” Gerard says. He takes a moment to think. “I know where  _ I _ came from, but I don’t know where  _ Keepers  _ came from. I doubt anyone does.” He pauses. “Well, maybe Ray has a guess.”

“Where are you from, then? Since you know that part?”

“I —  _ evolved.” _ Gerard makes a spinny sort of hand gesture that’s probably supposed to symbolize his own personal Birth of Venus, or whatever the fuck. “The Keepers that exist now, Mikey and Lindsey and everyone, we’re all second-generation. We were born from the remains of first-generation Keepers.”

Frank furrows his brows. “What happened to the first generation? Why’d you all take over from them?”

“They weren’t fit to Timekeep anymore.” Gerard shrugs, seemingly not too invested. “The world changes, you know? Religion shifted from polytheistic to mainly monotheistic. Literature changed from oral storytelling to written. It happens. But rather than fade away and let their influence run untamed, most of the old Keepers were content to pass down their responsibilities to us. It was better for humans that way.”

“Only  _ most _ were content?”

The corners of Gerard’s mouth twitch down. “Well I don’t know the whole story, obviously. I never met any first-gens. But there are rumors that some of those Keepers were too stubborn, or prideful, or something, to give up their Influence, so they just faded away in time.”

“God.” Frank tries to shake the feeling of unease that’s manifested at that thought. A being powerful enough to jump through time can just  _ disappear.  _ That doesn’t put a good taste in his mouth. “That’s horrible.”

Gerard looks away. “It happens.”

They sit in uncomfortable silence for a moment before Frank can come up with a gimme question to change the subject, since Gerard obviously isn’t putting any effort into it. “So you evolved from the old art Keeper, right?”

“It was actually less specific back then. There was a Keeper of Inspiration, they turned into Patrick and I.”

Frank wracks his memory for a moment but comes up blank. Dammit. “And Patrick is…”

“Music.”

“Right. Of course.” Frank should just get used to feeling like a dumbass. “Okay, just one more,” he says. “I’m not a Keeper, obviously. How the hell did I get here?”

Gerard’s fork falters as he tries to stab a piece of salmon. “I…haven’t figured that out yet. It’s somewhat unexplainable.”

Frank blinks at him. “Unexplainable?” 

“Well, I mean, there are theories.” Stirring his soup, Gerard doesn’t look up. “Ray’s constantly trying to figure out why things are the way they are. He thinks that stress can trigger it, or extreme circumstances, anything that would make you want to leave your current body. But I’ve never actually…met someone who’s done it.”

“Extreme circumstances,” Frank repeats. “That might actually make sense, given the fact that I was in jail before I got transported to Athens.”

Spluttering, Gerard almost loses a mouthful of chewed-up fish. “You were in  _ jail?”  _ Frank doesn’t miss how he subtly leans away.

Frank throws his hands up. “I’m innocent! I got framed for arson at  _ your _ art gallery!” 

_ “Arson? _ How the hell did  _ that _ happen?”

“Um.” Frank feels his neck heat up. He’s not entirely sure if Renaissance Gerard would be comfortable with the unabridged version of the story. “You were showing me some art in the back room, but you had to step out for a minute, so I went outside for a smoke. Someone must have looped the security footage or something, because the police couldn’t find evidence of anyone else going in or out of the room — but when I came back in, a bunch of the paintings were gone. Totally burnt up. The cops saw my lighter and the security tape, and since there was no other explanation, I got blamed.” He shrugs uncomfortably, looking at the floor. “And I know that doesn’t sound very convincing, but I swear I didn’t do it. I swear.”

“I believe you,” Gerard says after a moment, firm like he means it. Frank’s whole body relaxes without him even thinking about it; at least this version of Gerard doesn’t hate him. “I saw the lengths you went to just to try and save the art we found today. Did I even try to defend you to the police?”

Frank considers lying, but Gerard would probably see through it. “Not exactly.”

“Oh, god.” Gerard shakes his head at himself. “I can’t believe you’re in jail because of me.”

“It’s not — I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Frank isn’t sure if he’d say the same thing to modern era Gerard, but he’s certainly not going to be pissed at a guy who wasn’t even at the scene of the crime. “Besides, prisons in my time aren’t nearly as bad as they are here. We rarely, like, hang people.”

Gerard’s eyes go wide. “Is that going to happen to you?”

“God, no. Not for just burning a few things. Not even at a gallery as swanky as yours.” Frank reaches across the table and places his hand over Gerard’s twitching one, giving it a little squeeze. Gerard stares down at their overlapping hands with a little crease between his brows. Fuck. Frank pulls back immediately. “Uh, sorry.”

“No, it’s—” Gerard clears his throat. His fingers curl inward until his nails are digging into the flesh of his palm. “The person who actually burned down those paintings at my gallery. They’ve got to be our culprit.” 

“Right. Yeah.” Frank had sort of figured that, he was just yet to put it in words. He also hadn’t known how to explain it without delving into the whole  _ I’m-a-criminal! _ story. “So they’re — a Keeper?”

Gerard’s frown deepens. “I’ve met all the worldly influences. They wouldn’t do this. It’s against everything we stand for.”

“Who else could it be?”

“I’m not sure.” Gerard stares down at his plate. “Unless there are other people like you. But you’re—”

“Unexplainable,” Frank finishes for him, a little bit of annoyance slipping through. “Right. Got it.”

The look Gerard shoots him is downright apologetic. “I know it sounds bad. You seem like a good guy. I wish you hadn’t gotten dragged into this.”

_ “I _ wish I had just seen whoever’s behind this that night.” Frank sighs. “I mean, they must have been  _ right there. _ I was on the other side of the door.”

Gerard sits bolt upright. “You’re right. You were right there.”

“Uh, yeah.” Frank quirks an eyebrow at him. That’s what he’d just said. “Thanks for rubbing it in.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” Gerard leans forward suddenly, a new glint in his eyes. “We know without a doubt where our criminal is in your era. You’re supposed to be there, and so am I. Those events haven’t happened yet, linearly speaking. If we can get back there before our culprit does, we can catch them. And if they’re bent on destroying my posts, they’re probably going to take the same path there, so if we can stop them on the way…” He trails off.

“Okay, so then we’ll save a couple of paintings in a gallery.” Frank hates to rain on Gerard’s parade, but there are some inconvenient facts they have to face. “What about everything else?”

“We might find them before that,” Gerard points out.

“Assuming we don’t.”

“I’d have to talk to Ray about it, but—” Gerard’s eyes are far away. “I think…I’m not sure, but I think that if we catch them, it might have a ripple effect and reset from the beginning.”

That doesn’t really add up in Frank’s head. He’s no Keeper, though. “What if it doesn’t?”

The cloud over Gerard’s eyes clears, and he looks at Frank almost tenderly. “Then at least you’ll be out of jail.”

That doesn’t sound like too bad a deal. He wants to help Gerard restore peace to the art world, sure, but a selfish voice in the back of his head says he should just take what he can get.

Still. Maybe Gerard’s right. Maybe they can reverse things before it’s too late.

“When do we start?” Frank asks.

*

It turns out, Gerard needs a full night’s rest before he can jump again, which is sort of anti-climatic. Frank lies in his own guest bed — uncomfortable even in comparison to the plastic-covered mattress in his dorm — tossing and turning in the unfamiliar surroundings. He’s never been able to sleep without the calming buzz of Jersey traffic outside. Renaissance Italy is no exception.

He must drift off at some point, though, because when he opens his eyes again bright sunlight is pouring in through the window. Frank groans and rolls over, shoving his face in the pillow and mentally telling his headache to fuck off. 

A few minutes later, there’s a knock at his door. “Frank? You up?”

In response, Frank manages a strangled, “Mmmph.” He keeps his face in the pillow, but soon after there’s a telltale dip in the bed, and he knows Gerard has sat down next to him.

“Are you sick?” Gerard asks quietly.

Frank turns his head the minimal amount required to look up at Gerard with one eye. His head is tilted down to look at Frank, dark strands of hair falling into his face. It’s unfair to look so good this early in the morning. And in  _ Renaissance clothes.  _ “Headache.”

“Oh, I can fix that.” Gerard hops up, and the shift makes Frank groan again, head throbbing. He hears a muffled, “Sorry!” and then the door closes. Frank rolls onto his back, wondering what fresh hell he’s in for.

The door reopens with a creak a minute later, and Gerard comes back in carrying what appears to be an orange mushroom and a clay cup of something. “That doesn’t look like Tylenol,” mutters Frank.

Gerard gives him a strange look, and it occurs to Frank that  _ oh, _ Gerard doesn’t know what the hell Tylenol is. “It’s bruised saffron and spring water. Technically a hangover cure, but I’d say the symptoms are similar enough.”

Frank eyes the mushroom-thing dubiously. “Are you trying to poison me?”

“This stuff works!” defends Gerard. “How can you knock it when you haven’t even tried it?”

That philosophy probably shouldn’t extend to things that are bright orange and funky looking, but whatever. Sitting up a little, Frank makes grabby hands. “Give me the water.” 

Gerard passes the cup over, but he doesn’t put the saffron down. The first sip is cool but not cold, and it feels fantastic on Frank’s throat. His head clears a little. He makes a low, content noise and drinks some more.

Hesitantly, he reaches for the saffron. If Gerard’s fancy spring water can works wonders like this, then maybe it’s not bullshit after all. Giving it a hesitant sniff, he looks up to ask Gerard how one should approach eating such a thing. When their eyes meet, though, Gerard bites his lip.

“Frank,” he starts. “I need to ask, in the time you come from, are you and I—”

Unfortunately, halfway through Gerard’s sentence, Frank decides to brave his first bite and ends up with a mouthful of the grossest thing he’s ever tasted. He gags and tries not to retch, interrupting Gerard and barely managing to swallow the foul thing down.

“Sorry,” he gasps out, eyes watering. “I didn’t mean to — fuck, that was not as pleasant as the spring water.” He takes a swig, but it barely dulls the foul flavor. “What were you saying?”

“Nothing.” Gerard turns away. The tips of his ears are tinged pink. “It wasn’t anything important.”

Frank eyes him. The tone of Gerard’s voice had sort of made it seem important. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” Gerard gets up from the bed, and Frank has to resist the urge to grab his wrist and ask him to stay. “Just — drink the rest of that, okay? We’re going to try and jump as soon as you’re ready.”

“Okay,” Frank says, feeling just as lost as he had when he’d been dumped in a fountain in the middle of Rome yesterday. At least his headache is less pressing now, just a dull throb in his temple. 

He opens his mouth to say something else, but Gerard’s already out the door.

*

They land in a dark, narrow street outside of a tall building, trees crowding the structure on either side. “Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, 1889,” Gerard pants out before Frank can ask, swaying a little on his feet. Without thinking about it, Frank opens his arms and lets Gerard fall against his chest, holding him upright while he sucks in labored breaths. “It’s only a few hundred years, but, fuck.”

“It’s okay.” Frank rubs up and down his back rhythmically. “Catch your breath. We’ve got time.”

“I skipped a stop in between.” Gerard’s fingers dig into Frank’s arms hard enough to leave bruises, but Frank figures that’s only a fraction of the pain in Gerard’s head right now, so he can deal. “Normally I have Edo in 1832.”

Frank brushes his thumb over the nape of Gerard’s neck and then back down again. “Edo?”

“Where  _ The Great Wave off Kanagawa  _ was made.” Frank can feel Gerard’s hot breath through his shirt.

That reminds him. He looks down to see what attire he’s in now and is luckily met with something slightly more subtle than the Renaissance getup. Emphasis on slightly. He’s in a dark blue, high-collared waistcoat and what looks alarmingly like — okay, yes,  _ stockings. _ There’s also a hat, which he takes off of his head to inspect. It’s black and folded, almost militaristic. At least, Frank confirms after quickly patting his head, he’s back to short hair. Gerard looks similar, just in a light grey hue rather than blue. It’s kind of annoying that he pulls off the stockings.

“Okay,” Gerard breathes, and Frank loosens his grip on him so he can step back. “I’m good now.”

Frank tells himself he doesn’t miss the body heat. “So we’re in nineteenth century France.” He looks over his shoulder at the building behind them and tries to put something together, but predictably comes up blank. Maybe it’s due to lack of sunlight, but it just looks like any old gloomy building. Frank can’t even find a sign displayed on its front. “Because…?”

“Because this is the mental asylum where Vincent Van Gogh painted  _ Starry Night.” _ Grabbing his hand, Gerard pulls him towards the front door. “C’mon.”

“Woah, mental asylum?” Frank digs his heels in a little. He doesn’t want to be judgy or anything, but this is getting kind of sketchy. Well, even sketchier than supposed past-life time traveling already is. “Is it safe in there?”

When Gerard turns to look at him, it’s with a disarmingly sweet smile. Something ripples through Frank and makes his stomach flip. “I’ll protect you.”

Frank huffs out a breath and ignores the way his heart is beating double-time. “If anyone around here needs protection, motherfucker, it’s your scrawny—” They push open the doors and are met with eerie silence. Frank promptly eats his words. “Oh, shit. Creepy.”

The front lobby is entirely white and grey, an open area except for a few seats against the wall and a desk at the other end. The man behind it, who Frank assumes to be the receptionist, is slumped forward on its surface and fast asleep. Frank knows what they’re both thinking.

“Maybe it’s just been a long day.” Even as he says it, his skin prickles.

“Yeah, maybe.” Gerard sounds unconvinced.

The good news is that there’s no longer anyone to stop them on their way in. They tip-toe past, silent as mice, until Frank has a thought. “Shit. Do you know what room Van Gogh’s in?”

Gerard’s eyes go wide. Keepers, apparently, do not know everything after all. “Let me check,” he whispers back, then takes quiet steps until he’s right in front of the receptionist’s desk. He hunches over, and Frank holds his breath as a few papers rustle. The man behind the desk flinches, but doesn’t wake. 

Apparently having found what he needs, Gerard returns to Frank’s side. “Level four, door three,” he says lowly, and starts towards the stairs. 

Things only get weirder as they ascend. As they pass by the first floor corridor, Frank opens the door the tiniest bit and sticks his head out just to see. Slumped against the wall are what must be security guards in all-white outfits. A sick, cold feeling weaves its way down his spine.

“Gerard,” he starts, “I don’t think—”

Gerard casts him a tight-lipped look over his shoulder, seeming very much to have reached the same conclusion. “Just keep going,” he says.

On the fourth floor, there are more security guards passed out against the walls. Grabbing the nearest one by the shoulders, Frank shakes him, but the guard’s head only lolls to the side. He’s deep under.

The silence is suffocating. Frank takes a deep breath, and that’s when he realizes. “Gerard, do you smell—”

But Gerard’s already rushing forward, hand on the knob of door three and throwing his weight against it when it won’t budge. Now that he’s closer, Frank can see the smoke pouring out from underneath, slowly filling the hall and making him cough. 

“It’s locked,” Gerard cries, not bothering to keep it down anymore. “We need — we need—”

Frank reaches into the pockets of one of the unconscious guards, coming back up with a handful of keys on a rope. “Here,” he calls, tossing them to Gerard. Gerard picks the first one and shoves it into the lock, cursing when it won’t turn. 

“Try the next one,” he says, but Gerard’s already on it. “Are they labeled?”

Gerard spares the metal in his hand a look. “No.”

“Fucking Europeans.” Frank kicks the wall. The smoke is getting thicker; he can feel his heart beating in his throat. Their culprit could be on the other side of that door, doing the kind of damage that gives Gerard nightmares, but they just can’t  _ get in. _

“Got it!” Gerard hollers in relief as a key finally turns, twisting the knob and shoving the door open with his entire upper body. Frank is right behind him, stumbling into the room and trying frantically to see in the dark. The only source of light in the entire room, Frank realizes, is the moon coming in from the balcony window — and the easel currently on fire.

Upon their entrance, the shadowy figure in the middle of the room turns and bolts. The figure throws open the balcony window and jumps, nothing more than a streak of ink against the night sky.

“Fuck!” Without a second thought, Gerard reaches over and yanks a sheet from the sleeping form in the bed on their left. The guy in the bed doesn’t even stir. Frank spares him a second glance and sees that even in rest, he looks exhausted, his face pinched and troubled. His long legs hang off the bed and his red beard looks like it hasn’t been shaved in weeks.

“Holy fuck,” Frank says, too loudly. “That’s Vincent Van Gogh.”

“No shit.” Gerard is a bit preoccupied attempting to smother the fire with the bedsheet, until it too bursts into flames. Frank looks around for something that could help and his eyes land on a set of paints, next to which are two tubs of liquid. He picks up the closer one and runs for Gerard, about to dump it all over the sheet and canvas when Gerard shrieks, “Not that one!”

Frank flails an arm at him. “We have to put it out!” 

“That’s turpentine, idiot! Can’t you smell it?”

Frank inhales, and the sharp scent hits him. He hadn’t originally noticed it over the smoke. “Oh, shit.” He runs back and grabs the other container, giving it a suspicious sniff before going back over. “Okay, this one’s water!”

The fire flickers and dies as Frank empties the contents of the tub. The water hits the ground with a loud  _ whoosh, _ but when Frank looks over, Van Gogh is still fast asleep. Whatever kind of spell their criminal has got these people under is major. 

Carefully, Gerard lifts the sodden sheet off of the canvas. It smells of smoke and it’s pockmarked with burns, and before Frank can even see it, he knows the  _ Starry Night _ isn’t much better.

“I’m sorry, Gee,” he whispers, hand coming up to grip Gerard’s elbow. 

The painting is in ruins, what looks like years of hard work reduced to ash in some places and curling canvas in others. Without a word, Gerard goes to stand by the balcony, looking down.

“Are they out there?” Even as he asks it, Frank knows the answer.

“They must have jumped to another era.” Gerard’s voice is cold, emotionless. It makes Frank miss the tear-stained tone from before. 

Frank moves next to him, brushing their hands together gently. He won’t admit it, but having Gerard so close to the edge of the balcony is making him nervous. “We can try again tomorrow.”

Gerard shakes his head impassively. “We can’t wait until tomorrow.”

“Gerard.” Frank creases his eyebrows at him. “You can’t — do you remember what state you were in, like, fifteen minutes ago? You can’t do that again right now.”

“We have to,” Gerard says. “If they beat us back to your era, it’s over.”

“Gerard,” Frank tries again. He grabs Gerard’s hand, wanting to talk some sense into him, and that’s his mistake. As soon as he does, he feels the tug on the back of his neck, the pull of another time and place. He tries to pull back, but Gerard grips his fingers harder.

“Gee,” he says frantically. “Gee, if you do this, it could — you said it could—” His throat closes, voice gone. This could  _ kill _ Gerard. Frank tries to hold on, tries to keep them grounded here, but the darkness overtakes him like a blow to the head. He tries to push past it, to control it, but it’s hard, it’s so hard—

“Where  _ are _ we?” he hears Gerard say, his voice distant and muffled. Frank wants to retort something about Gerard finally knowing how he feels, but the second he tries to string a thought together, his skull feels like it’s exploding.

_ “Fuck,” _ he hisses out through clenched teeth, bringing up his hands to rub at his temples clumsily. It’s  _ unbearable, _ he can’t even open his eyes.

“Seriously,” Gerard says, quieter. Frank isn’t sure if he’s doing it for Frank’s obvious head trauma or just out of confusion, but either way, it’s appreciated. “Seriously, Frank, I don’t know where we are.”

A couple of deep breaths later, Frank is finally able to crack open an eye. The first thing he sees is Gerard’s worried face; then, as he looks around, a vacant street. That is, vacant except for the oldest looking car Frank has ever seen. It doesn’t even feel right to call it a car. It’s an  _ automobile  _ for sure — different sized wooden wheels, an open top, the whole bit. Despite its old design, though, it looks brand new.

“It still looks like we’re in France.” Gerard is also darting his gaze around, his face expressionless. “And it hasn’t been that long, either. The architecture still looks the same as Van Gogh’s. But I definitely didn’t bring us here.”

“Then who did?” Frank asks, breathless. His headache has begun to ebb, at least.

“We should go,” Gerard says without answering the question. He picks up Frank’s limp hands. “Yes. We need to go. This isn’t where I was trying to take us.”

Frank may be disoriented, but he remembers, still, that, “Wait, Gerard, you can’t do that! You can’t, it’ll—!”

It’s too late.

  
  


Frank blinks, and he’s in a bedroom. In a heap next to him on the ground is Gerard.

“You fucking idiot,” he mutters. He dutifully ignores the tight feeling in his chest, grabbing Gerard’s arm and dragging him over to the bed. 

The room they’ve landed in is homey but crowded, with a plush red couch that matches the bed against the wall and a floor-to-ceiling window on the other side, its drapes sheer and pulled open. The rest of the space is filled with tall, towering bookshelves containing enough titles to fill a library. Art hangs crookedly from the walls, put up haphazardly like someone had done it in blindfolded.

Frank wishes he was a history major. Then maybe those clues would actually mean something.

He looks down at Gerard on the floor next to the bed and up at the wrinkled bed covers, trying to figure out how in hell he’s going to get him from point A to point B. Brown loafers on his own feet catch his eye instead.

Lacking a mirror, he looks at Gerard as reference. What they’re wearing is almost… _ normal. _ An off-white collared shirt tucked into tan slacks really isn’t all that bad, considering the frilly hell they’d just come from. He’s reaching up, discovering his hair is smooth and flat, just as the door behind him creaks open.

Spinning on his heel, he throws on a snarl and gets ready to tell whoever’s there to fuck right off. He’s dealing with a  _ situation, _ and he doesn’t have time to answer questions regarding suddenly appearing in some stranger’s house. But then he catches sight of the face.

_ “Mikey?” _

“Uh.” Mikey blinks, eyes flitting between Frank’s defensive stance and Gerard on the ground. Frank doesn’t blame him; he wouldn’t know what to make of this either. “Do I know you?”

“No.” That’s not entirely true. “Well, yes, you do, just not right now. I mean.” Frank shakes his head at himself. Finally, he spreads out both hands and says, “I’m Frank. I know you’re a Keeper, I know Gerard’s a Keeper, and we came here together.”

“Oh, lord.” Mikey groans. “That’s never good news.”

Frank bites his lip, because, well, it fucking isn’t. “Can you help me get him onto the bed?”

Together, they drag Gerard up by his hands and feet, half-assedly wrapping the covers around him. He doesn’t so much as stir.

“Jesus,” Mikey says into his hands. “He’s out cold.”

“He’s tired.”

“How far did he jump?”

“Um, we were just at his Van Gogh post.” Frank scrunches his eyebrows, trying to remember the year before giving up. Whatever. Hopefully Mikey will know. “And then there was a pitstop at someplace we didn’t know in between. Before that, though, he, uh — we’d just come from the Renaissance.”

“That dumbass.” At least this Mikey shares modern Mikey’s exasperation with his brother. It almost makes up for how totally creepy it is to see his best friend from college sitting in a strange bedroom in god knows where. In god knows  _ when.  _ “He has a post in between Van Gogh and here, too. I think it’s Munch’s  _ Scream. _ He shouldn’t have skipped it.”

“Huh,” Frank says, and takes a moment to contemplate if that’s where they could have just been. Gerard had said he didn’t recognize it, though. Maybe he’d just over- or undershot by a few years? Can Keepers miss their post? He’d ask later. “So where are we, exactly?”

Mikey casts his unconscious brother a look of disbelief. “He didn’t tell you where you were going before you jumped?”

Frank shakes his head. 

“Of course he didn’t.” Mikey rolls his eyes. “We’re in 1937, right outside of the Paris World Fair.”

“Oh,” Frank says. 1937. Less than a hundred years ago. “That explains the, uh. Almost not-hideous clothes.”

Mikey squints at him, and Frank is briefly afraid that he’s offended his fashion taste. But all Mikey says is, “How do you know me again?”

“We—” Frank is struck by a thought. “Will I be messing up the space-time continuum by telling you?”

Pinching his lips together, Mikey says flatly, “I transcend time.”

“Oh, right.” Frank looks at his lap. He misses his version of Mikey, the one that’s snarky  _ with _ him, not  _ at  _ him. “We go to college together. We’ve had a lot of the same classes the past couple years, so we’re good friends.”

“What kind of classes?”

Frank racks his memory, trying to recall. At some point college had become less about classes and more about what they did in between them. “Calculus, beginning and intermediate Spanish, History of the English Language. I also did a brief stint in German with you before dropping it.”

Mikey smiles against the back of his hand, appreciating his future self for the slacker he is. “Good to see I’ve been branching out.”

“In your defense, you’ve flunked enough of your other subjects to make up for being a language genius.”

That answer must satisfy Mikey, because he nods thoughtfully. Then he jerks his chin towards his brother’s sleeping form. “How do you know him?”

Frank’s toes curl in his shoes as his stomach spontaneously swoops. “You took me to an opening at his art gallery. We sort of hit it off.”

“Oh?” Mikey raises an eyebrow, almost teasing. “Did you now?”

“Nothing — nothing happened,” Frank says hurriedly. He’d get the same ribbing from modern Mikey, but this feels worlds different. “At the gallery, actually, some of the paintings got burned, and—”

Behind them on the bed, there’s a, “Huh!” and then Gerard sits suddenly upright, clutching his forehead and hissing in pain. Frank is by his side immediately, pushing him to lie back and rubbing his hands over his shoulders to loosen the tension. He pretends not to notice the smirk Mikey sends him.

“How long was I out?” Gerard croaks, jaw clenching in pain. “We made it to Paris, right?”

“You’re in Paris,” confirms Mikey. “I could hear the thump all the way from the other side of the house. Scared the shit out of me.”

Gerard smiles sheepishly, but it quickly morphs into a grimace. “Fuck, can someone — water?”

Taking pity on Frank since he has no idea where anything is, Mikey gets up and heads down the hall. Frank keeps both eyes on Gerard, brushing his hair back from his forehead and testing to see whether he’s got a fever or anything.

“I told you not to do that,” he accuses. “God, I had no idea if you’d even—”

Gerard gently takes his hand and lifts it to his mouth, kissing the back of it. Frank’s body goes from hot to cold and back to hot in an instant. He looks up to meet Gerard’s eyes, only to find them closed. Oh. He must be pretty out of it.

Frank drops Gerard’s hand as soon as he hears Mikey coming back into the room. “Here,” he tells Gerard, handing over a glass of water. 

Gerard takes a long gulp, then asks, “So what was regular me doing before this version crash-landed?”

Gesturing to an open book on the floor, Mikey says, “Reading, I think.”

Frank looks between them. “Do you guys live together?”

Mikey frowns at him a little, like the answer should be obvious. “We both have posts in this era, so, yeah.”

“Does that happen a lot?” Frank asks.

“Not really.” Mikey shrugs. “The World Fair brings all sorts of worldly influences. Ray’s here, and I think Lindsey is too. Lots of political unrest at these sorts of things.”

Something clicks in Frank’s head, and he snaps his fingers, turning to Gerard. “Ray’s here? Didn’t you say you needed to talk to Ray?”

“Yeah, for a couple of reasons.” Gerard grits his teeth and rubs his forehead. He looks at Mikey. “Did Frank fill you in?”

“He told me we’re college buddies and that you have an art gallery filled with ash,” Mikey summarizes effectively. “Then we were rudely interrupted by you waking up.”

Gerard rolls his eyes, but he explains the situation anyway.

“They just jumped off the balcony and vanished?” Mikey asks in disbelief once Gerard is finished. His eyes are huge, which Frank knows from personal experience takes a hell of a shock. “That’s crazy. Did you at least see what they look like?”

Gerard shakes his head. “It was dark.”

“Shit.” Mikey frowns and tugs on his fingers. “So you want to reset the timeline.”

“I need to ask Ray about it, but yeah. Ideally.”

Even though Frank is looking at Gerard, he gets the feeling that Mikey’s eyes are on him. He tries not to flinch under the gaze. “But doesn’t that mean…”

Gerard cuts Mikey off before he can finish. “We don’t know. We haven’t talked about it.”

“Talked about what?” Frank asks, but Gerard ignores him. “Hey, fucker, what are you—”

“I can help you find Ray,” Mikey says, louder. “It’s a bit of a walk, though, so rest a minute. We’ll leave in a few.”

Frank looks between them. There’s obviously something he’s missing, and it’s grating on his nerves, but he doesn’t want to get in an argument with Gerard when he’s already in a fragile state. In fact, his eyes are already slipping back shut. 

Mikey gets up and closes the door behind himself. For a second, Frank considers following him, but in the end he lays down next to Gerard and shuts his eyes, too. He leaves enough room between them for it to seem platonic, but he itches to reach forward and wrap his hands around Gerard’s waist, drape his chin over his shoulder. 

“Just a few,” Frank repeats to himself, feeling consciousness slip away.

*

It’s still light outside when they wake. Thank god. They head out as soon as they can.

“Dude,” Frank says as Gerard drags him past a booth that he desperately wants to go investigate. The World Fair is set up sprawling along the streets of Paris on all sides of the Eiffel Tower — the honest-to-god  _ Eiffel Tower, _ Frank cannot believe his eyes — with small booths interspersed between oversized, decorative buildings. “Dude, come on, I just want to look.”

Gerard turns to him and scowls. Mikey doesn’t look over his shoulder, but Frank suspects he’s wearing a similar expression. “We’re kind of under a time crunch, here.”

“Yeah, but—” Frank is yanked away from yet another booth, almost colliding with another fair-goer. “You can come here  _ whenever. _ Do you think I’m ever going to see the World Fair again?”

A couple of different emotions flit across Gerard’s face before he settles on sympathy. “I’ll explain things as we walk, okay? I’m sorry that we don’t have time to look at everything.”

“Alright, fine.” Frank crosses his arms, but it’s half-hearted at best. He’s finally embraced this freaky time travel thing; he may as well get something out of it.

“So the tall buildings are called pavilions.” Gerard points to the nearest one, which is made of white columns over a tan interior with a golden eagle on top. “They represent different countries.”

Frank squints up at the sunlight reflecting off of the metallic bird. “Which country is that one?”

“Germany.”

“Oh.” Frank grimaces. History major or not, he knows what Germany is up to in this time period. “Who else is here?”

“Well, there’s a lot.” Gerard throws him a sideways grin. Nerd. “Some of the major players, though, are Spain, the Soviets, Canada, and Italy. Plus France, obviously, since they’re hosting.”

“You forgot Britain,” Mikey calls from up ahead.

“Right. Thanks,” Gerard yells back. Under his breath, he mutters, “He thinks he’s an expert just because he can talk to everyone here,” and rolls his eyes. Frank bites back his smile.

“Where are we headed, then?” asks Frank. He kind of wants to check them all out, but he sincerely doubts that’s on the agenda.

“Spain,” Gerard says, just as Mikey decides, “Italy.” Hearing this, Mikey turns to look over his shoulder, and the brothers glare lasers at each other. 

“Spain,” Gerard repeats, louder. “Because that’s where Picasso’s new piece is. That’s obviously the next target.”

“What’s he got here?” Try as he might, Frank is never really going to get a hang of the whole art thing.

With his trademarked long-suffering, art-snobby sigh, Gerard says,  _ “Guernica. _ An oil painting. One of the most famous commentaries on the horrors of war.”

“You lost me at  _ Guernica,” _ says Frank. “But, okay. If that’s where our criminal is headed, that’s where we should go.”

Mikey makes a frustrated noise. “So, what, you get there just in time to watch the painting burned? That’s your plan?”

“We get there before them and save the painting from being burned,” Frank says slowly. “Then we catch them.”

“That’s an idiot’s plan,” says Mikey. “In the off chance that you  _ do _ show up before they do, in the off chance that the painting isn’t  _ already gone, _ then your arsonist here is just going to take one look at you guys and vanish into another era. Just like they did at Van Gogh.”

Shit. That’s sort of a good point. Frank looks over at Gerard, wanting to know what he makes of that, and sees a tight frown. “You think I haven’t thought about that?” he retorts. “I know we can’t catch them like this. But I’ll be fucking damned if I let another one of my posts burn up when I could have stopped it.”

“We need to talk to Ray,” Mikey says firmly, making it clear he’s not going to listen to any arguments. “Italy just invented linoleum and Termolux. He’s got to be at their pavilion. He’ll have something to say about your timeline theory, and he might have a way to stop whoever this is from being able to time jump. Don’t rush into this thing unarmed, Gee.”

The three of them stop abruptly as the road curves left and right. Mikey turns towards the left, beckoning for them to follow, but Gerard’s feet remain planted. “I can’t,” he says, voice like broken glass. “I’ve watched so many of them burn and crumble, Mikey, I just — I can’t do it again.”

“You’re picking a fight you can’t win,” Mikey says, frustratingly placid. “Find them in the next era. If you’re right about the timeline, the damage done here doesn’t matter.”

“But what if I’m not right?” Gerard sounds small. “You don’t get it, Mikey, because language almost never dies. But this is why I’m here. You know I can’t abandon my post.”

Frank’s eyes dart between them, taking in Gerard’s stormy, closed-off face and the stubborn jut of Mikey’s chin. He may not have grown up with brothers, but he knows an impasse when he sees one.

“We’re wasting time,” he cuts in before either of them can get another word out. “Gerard, go save the Picasso. Mikey, if you think Ray is at the Italian pavilion, go there. You live in the same house, for fuck’s sake. You’ll find each other again.”

They both seem to consider it, but then Mikey quirks an eyebrow. “Who are you going to go with?”

Biting his lip, Frank looks at Gerard. The expression on his face makes Frank’s heart twist. Still, he knows what’s right. Turning back to Mikey, he says, “Um, with you. I think I’ll be more helpful that way.” What he doesn’t mention is that Mikey has the better plan. He knows that Gerard can read between the lines, though; he purposely doesn’t look back at him. He just hopes to god that Gerard knows when not to take things personally.

Mikey, unsurprisingly, is indifferent about the choice. “Cool. Let’s move, then. It’s not far from here.”

As he walks past, Frank takes a wider berth than necessary, trying to catch Gerard’s hand. When he sees that he’s already turned away, though, his fingers curl back in on themselves.

*

“You’re dealing with an  _ art thief?” _

“More of an art destructionist,” Mikey corrects. “So is Gee’s theory bullshit, or what?”

“It’s hard to say.” Ray looks at the ceiling. The Italian pavilion is full of art and innovations — Ray had, in fact, been lingering near the linoleum — but upon entering Frank had found out that it’s built  _ right under the Eiffel Tower. _ Ray is probably just contemplating, or whatever, but it does nothing to calm Frank’s nerves that the whole place is going to come crashing down under several thousand tons of iron. “I actually talk about this with Gabe a lot whenever we’re in the same eras. He thinks time is linear, extending in either direction forever.”

Frank’s mouth flattens into a line, because they hadn’t really come here to listen to what ideas some other guy is spinning. “But what do  _ you _ think?”

Ray gives him a look that makes him feel tiny. He’s suddenly reminded that Gerard had said science is one of the biggest worldly influences. “I think Gabe will say anything, so long as it sounds philosophical enough.”

Mikey rolls his eyes, but it’s kind of fond. “Philosophy is a stoner sport. Do you have any actual research?”

Ray scratches the side of his head, making his ‘fro bounce. “Well, no. Nothing conclusive, at least. It’s hard to observe time when you’re constantly moving through it.”

“Great.” Sighing, Frank shifts on his feet — if he can’t get anything useful here, he may as well go help Gerard — but Ray holds up a finger.

“I’m not discounting his theory. I can’t agree to new laws without solid evidence, but I  _ do _ think that whoever you’re trying to catch here is working outside of the normal laws anyway. If you pluck them out of the timeline, or send them somewhere they haven’t done damage yet, time may have no other choice but to reset their doings completely.”

“Are you sure about that?” Mikey asks. 

After tilting his head to either side and making an, “Ehh,” sound, Ray settles on, “About eighty-five percent.”

Frank shrugs. “That’s more than half.”

“We’ll take it,” Mikey agrees. “Now, about our other issue?”

Ray clicks his fingers. “Right. That, I actually have a solution for. We’ve been working on this new technology for awhile, Lindsey and I. Well, I’ve been working on it. She mostly just sits there and tells me what I’m doing wrong.”

“Politicians,” Mikey says with a huff.

“I know.” Ray shakes his head. “Anyway, it functions as a blocker of sorts. Keeps travelers from jumping. I don’t have the prototype on me, but if you want I could swing by later and drop it off.”

“Yes,” Frank says immediately. “I mean, yeah, that would be great.”

Ray offers him a bemused smile. Mikey says, “Just don’t wait too long, alright? Gee’s going to be itching to get out of here as soon as he’s up to it. I know linoleum is fascinating and all, but it’d be a huge help.”

“Isn’t it?” Ray gives the shiny tile across the room an appreciative glance before snapping out of it. “Okay, sure. I’ll stop by before you guys take off.”

“Thank you,” Frank says, more genuine than he has in a long time. After the weirdest days of his life, it’s nice to finally find someone rooting for them.

*

When they run into Gerard again on the fairgrounds, he’s dragging a wooden wagon behind him as fast as he can and looking very, very nervous. Covering the wagon is a tarp, jutting up to conceal something that’s got to be at least twice as tall as Gerard. It looks like it took a miracle to keep it steady even this long.

“Gerard.” Mikey scrubs a hand over his eyes, like he’s desperately wishing this is all just a hallucination he can rub away.  _ “Don’t _ tell me you stole the Picasso.”

Gerard worries his bottom lip between his teeth and looks over his shoulder at the precarious wagon and its cargo. The look he turns on Mikey is not reassuring in the slightest. “I uh, may have stolen the Picasso.”

“How?” Mikey exclaims, then waves a hand in the air. “No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to fucking know. Just — Frank, come help us carry this, if you drag that godforsaken thing in a fucking  _ wagon _ for one more second it’s all going to collapse.”

Gerard’s eyebrows crease with a frown, and he lets go of the wagon to stand akimbo. It sways dangerously. “Look, there was no one else around to help me move it, and I had to be fast. I’d say I did pretty well considering the circumstances.”

“Yeah, fucking perfect,” Frank mutters distractedly, picking up the corner of the painting that Mikey shoves in his face. There’s not a discreet thing about it, but they get the stupid canvas lifted and start moving down the street again in the direction of the Way house. Art theft and destruction was apparently much easier before the invention of security cameras, Frank thinks bitterly.

A problem presents itself when they try to turn a corner and the whole thing almost hits the ground, but luckily Mikey takes on extra weight and rights them just in time. “Gerard,” he grunts out, “you’re a fucking imbecile, but this is by far your worst idea yet.”

“I couldn’t just leave it!” Gerard defends. “Who knows when the arsonist would have shown up? They could be there right now!”

“You’re right,” Mikey bitches. “I’m so glad we just painted a target on our backs!”

“It’s wrapped in a tarp, asshole, it’s not like anyone knows.”

“Jesus, you want to say that a little louder? Let the fucking Netherlands hear it, too?”

“Shut up,” Frank wheezes. “Both of you, shut up, and someone open the goddamn door.”

“Shit, sorry.” So wrapped up in their feud, Gerard apparently hadn’t even noticed that they’d made it home.

“Where are we going to keep this thing? It’s humongous.” Mikey looks around like he’s trying to mentally redecorate as the three of them shuffle into the living room as best they can. Something shatters as they pass by and Frank winces, looking down to see the remains of a lamp.

“I don’t know.” Gerard flaps a hand to the best of his ability while still holding onto the piece. “Put it in my room, I guess.”

Mikey looks down his nose at him. “There’s no space in your room. I have to suck my gut in just to get through the door.”

“What, you want the priceless stolen painting in your room?”

“Put it in the kitchen,” Mikey says. “It’s boring in there anyway.”

“Picassos are not made for the kitchen,” Gerard objects under his breath, but he still goes willingly when Mikey turns them around. They settle it against the far wall, out of sight from all windows and what Gerard calls the “splash zone.” The brown tarp doesn’t really go with the muted purples of the place, but no one mentions it.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you.” Mikey leans back against the counter. “We can’t leave until later. Ray’s coming by with a prototype that could help.”

Gerard blinks at him. “We?”

“What, after all the dumb shit you got yourself into today, you think I’d let you keep moving without another Keeper?” He spares Frank a glance. “No offense.”

“None taken.” Frank puts his hands in front of his chest. “I never know what the hell is going on. It’d be nice to have someone else around who does.”

“Mikey,” Gerard starts, shaking his head a little frantically. “We still don’t know what we’re up against. If you get hurt, I’d never be able to—”

Frank interrupts before he can think better of it. “Wait, if you guys get hurt or something, wouldn’t you just, like, respawn in a different era? You said versions of us exist in every point in time, right?”

“Yeah, but.” Reaching a hand up to the back of his neck, Gerard looks at Mikey, and they come to some silent conclusion before Gerard continues. “It works like that for humans. If you died, your psyche would still exist in your next life, even though you wouldn’t know it. Since Keepers technically exist out of time, though…” He trails off.

“When it’s game over, it’s game over,” Mikey concludes. “We’re erased from the timeline entirely.”

The tips of Frank’s fingers go numb. Living without Gerard and Mikey — whatever versions of them, wherever — isn’t something he ever wants to experience. “What happens to your worldly influence? Does someone else get it?”

“We don’t know.” Gerard looks at his shoes. “Haven’t ever seen it happen. It might just cease to exist.”

“Shit,” Frank says, completely inadequately. “Guys, I don’t know if we should — whoever we’re dealing with, if they’re dangerous—”

When Gerard looks up and meets his eyes, they’re darker than Frank has ever seen them, a frightening kind of intensity crackling beneath his irises like lightning. “If we step back and let them destroy all of art history, it’s over. I’d fade. They may as well kill me.”

“Fine.” Frank’s chest feels like a black hole, but he grits his teeth and keeps it together. More than anything, he wants to say that it doesn’t matter, that he’d rather watch every painting burn than lose Gerard, fuck the consequences. He knows what Gerard would think of that, though. And if losing art would cause Gerard to fade anyway, then — fuck. He settles for, “But from now on, I go first. I look before we all leap.”

Gerard’s brow furrows even lower. “That’s not how this works.”

“It is now,” Frank says. “I’m disposable. You two aren’t.”

A heavy silence engulfs the room after that, and Frank almost doesn’t breathe for fear of breaking it. Gerard’s eyes are back on Mikey again, a message passing between them wordlessly. They must reach some sort of consensus, because Mikey’s stiff frame relaxes and he says, “I’m going to go double check the locks. Make sure no one from the fair followed us back here.”

When he leaves, he takes any remaining air of tranquility with him. Frank drills holes in the wall with his gaze. Internally, he’s daring Gerard to contradict him, to dispute the obvious facts.

He’s expecting a yell, so it’s a surprise when Gerard speaks softly. “My life isn’t worth any more than yours.”

“It is.” Though it’s difficult, he manages to meet Gerard’s eyes. The depth in them makes his throat dry. “You only get one of them.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

“If something happens to me, I wake up in my next life sooner or later and I move on,” Frank says over him. “If you die, all of humanity might lose  _ art.” _

“You shouldn’t have to give up your chance to live in your world.” Gerard steps a little closer but drops his arms before he can reach out. “Not for me.”

Frank growls in the back of his throat. “We don’t even know if anything bad is going to happen. Whoever this is, they could be no big deal. There’s a huge difference between burning some paintings and  _ killing _ a  _ person.” _

“That’s not a risk I’m willing to take!” Gerard catches his tone and rocks back on his heels, pulling on the ends of his hair and looking anywhere with Frank. “Look. I know you’re trying to be brave. But it’s reckless. Mikey and I have more experience in these places, and if anyone has to take the fall, it should be one of us.”

“It doesn’t matter if you know the place if you spend the first five minutes passed out on the ground,” Frank retorts. He knows it’s a low blow, but he’s too pissed to care. “Stop acting like this isn’t the logical thing to do. We’re dealing with shit a lot bigger than our own personal fucking wishes.”

“You think I would have wished for any of this?” Gerard’s mouth twists nastily. “You think these are the circumstances I wanted us to meet under? Me, failing at the only thing I exist for, and you, walking around fucking clueless as to how you even got here? You think this is what I  _ wished _ for?”

“I need you to look out for yourself and Mikey first.” Frank grips him by the shoulders, forcing their gazes to meet. “I need you to promise me that you will.”

Underneath Frank’s fingertips, Gerard’s whole body is shaking. “I can’t.”

“You have to.”

“I  _ can’t!” _

Frank gets up even further in his space. There is no way Gerard is this blind to reason, and he’ll break soon enough. “Why the fuck not? Huh?”

“I tried to ask you something the other day,” Gerard grits out. Frank’s thoughts whirl, thrown by the sudden change in direction, but he doesn’t let go of Gerard. “I didn’t get to finish. I need to know the answer now.”

Frank’s toes curl in his shoes. This doesn’t sound like it could go anywhere good. “Yeah?”

“Where you’re from.” Gerard stares at him intently. Frank can feel his harsh breathing on his face. “Who am I to you? Was that night at the gallery really the first time we met?”

Oh, fuck. Frank doesn’t want to stroll down this memory lane, not right now. He spits out, “Yes. It was the first time.”

Gerard shakes his head fervently. “You didn’t answer the whole question.” When Frank stays silent, he prompts, “Who am I to you?”

He wants to hold it in. These aren’t the right circumstances, not even close. This version of Gerard doesn’t hold any knowledge past 1937. This Gerard might not even identify as gay. They don’t have time to deal with the repercussions of whatever hell this may let loose, not when the clock is already ticking twice as fast as they can handle.

“Please,” he hears Gerard whisper, clutching at his forearms. “Please. I have to know.”

Frank meets Gerard’s watery eyes, and he knows he never stood a chance.

“We weren’t anything,” he says hoarsely. “But we were…almost something.”

Gerard’s fingers convulse on Frank’s arms, squeezing so hard they may leave bruises. “What were we almost?”

Almost. The word echoes in Frank’s head. He’s not even entirely sure. Almost a one-night stand and an awkward conversation in the morning? Almost a few dates and a quick fuck? Almost a boyfriend? Almost much, much more? Frank hadn’t even realized how badly he’s wanted an answer to all those questions until there’s a hollow ache in his chest.

Whatever they almost could have been, Frank still wants it. He wants whatever he can get. 

Before he can overthink it, he tilts his chin up and presses his lips to Gerard’s.

“Oh,” Gerard breathes out, his mouth moving against Frank’s. He tastes even sweeter than Frank had imagined what seems like forever ago in the shadowy back room of his gallery, and Frank feels his resolve melting away. Gerard pushes back a little and Frank lets him, until his back is digging into the edge of the counter and Gerard’s body heat is radiating against Frank’s chest.

Frank slides a hand up and around Gerard’s back until he reaches his hair, then tugs him down so he can deepen the kiss. “This is why I can’t let anything happen to you,” Gerard murmurs against his mouth. “I can’t…I can’t take this away from the person I’m going to be. I can’t.”

Biting Gerard’s bottom lip, Frank grumbles, “Shut up.” He’s not going to argue about this right now. “I’ve been waiting hundreds of years for this. Don’t ruin it.”

The puff of air Gerard’s lets out against his mouth must be a laugh. “A lot longer than that, technically. It’s more like thousands.”

“I said shut up,” Frank repeats fondly. “You can bore me about the intricacies of time travel when I’m done kissing your neck.” Taking Gerard’s jaw in one hand, Frank pulls away from the kiss so he can taste the skin on the way down to Gerard’s throat. He finds Gerard’s pulse point and runs his tongue over it, smiling when it makes Gerard shiver.

“Fine, fine,” Gerard concedes. He’s trying to keep his voice level, but the death grip he’s got on Frank’s hips gives it away. “Later. Got it.”

“Good.” Frank follows up the quick scrape of teeth with an open-mouthed kiss, relishing in the groan he gets in return. His blood feels like it’s slinging through him, pulsing in time with Gerard’s heart. He untucks Gerard’s shirt from under his belt and sneaks a hand underneath to check, flattening his palm over Gerard’s heart and counting the rhythm. It’s triple what it must normally be, and that makes Frank’s stomach bottom out. He  _ wants. _ He wants so _ bad. _

“What are you doing?” Gerard looks down at Frank’s hand under his shirt, then leans forward to brush his mouth over Frank’s cheek.

“Nothing.” Even as he shakes his head, Frank doesn’t move his palm. He lets his thumb stroke against the soft skin of Gerard’s chest. Underneath his fingers, he feels Gerard’s heartbeat pick up even more.

Suddenly, something pounds at the door. Gerard tears away like Frank’s touch is burning him.

“Oh my god, what if that’s—” His eyes are as big as moons. “Shit, help me hide the painting. Where the hell else can we put it?”

There’s another loud knock on the front door, and then a familiar voice says, “Are you guys really going to leave me out here?”

“Ray.” Gerard’s entire body sags against the counter, and his expression melts into relief. Frank can’t help but notice that he is entirely too far away. “It’s just Ray.”

“That’s fine, I’ll get it!” Mikey hollers. “It’s not like I’m on the other side of the house or anything!”

“Sorry!” Gerard calls back, grimacing. Frank can’t stop staring at him. He sort of can’t believe that just happened.

In the background, there’s the distinct sound of a lock sliding open and then Ray’s voice fills the house as he greets Mikey. Frank takes the few steps between them while he still can and grabs Gerard’s hand, trying to redirect his attention.

It works. When Gerard looks down at him, his eyes glitter. “Hey,” he whispers.

“Hey,” Frank says back. There’s a knot in his stomach that won’t come undone until he has some answers, even at the risk of sounding desperate. “Later, can we — I mean, is this—”

“Not a one-off thing,” Gerard assures him. He brushes a strand of hair away from Frank’s face and then meets him halfway in a chaste kiss. “Let’s go see what Ray brought us, yeah?”

*

The answer turns out to be something tiny and silver that looks way too advanced for the 1930s. They spread out on the couch and chairs to watch as Ray picks it up and shows off the underside of it. The top is a half-dome of metal, but the bottom is flat, and there are six mini wires sticking out of it on either side.

Gerard tilts his head and narrows his eyes at the device. “It sort of looks like—”

“A bug. I know.” Ray turns it over in his hand. “It’s symbolic.”

Mikey dubiously eyes first the little bug-thing, then Ray. “Have you been talking to Pete?”

“It’s symbolic because it works like a parasite.” Ray swats Mikey’s knee playfully. “When you put it on someone, it latches onto their skin and keeps them from jumping.”

Gerard flattens a palm and holds it out, evidently wanting to see for himself. Ray hands the prototype over with just a minor amount of reluctance. “How does it work?” Gerard asks wonderingly, twisting his hand to look at it from all angles. It really does look like a beetle; Frank half-expects it to start crawling around.

“It emits a fuckton of noise right into the nervous system,” explains Ray. “It takes a lot of concentration to make a jump, right? But with that thing screaming in your ear, it’s impossible to focus. You could still move someone through time, but they couldn’t make the jump themself.”

Apparently deciding Gerard’s had enough time, Mikey plucks the device out of his brother’s hand so he can inspect it for himself. He turns it over once more to look at its wiry legs. “Once you stick it on someone, does it really stay put?”

Ray nods vehemently. “I made the mistake of testing it on myself once. It took days to get off, and that was with me and Lindsey combined. And that was just the first model. It’s gotten even stronger since then.”

“Jesus,” Frank mutters. “That’s hardcore.”

“You have no idea.” Ray shudders, obviously reliving those few powerless days. “The trick is getting it on there. Then you’re set.”

“It’ll do the job.” Taking the bug back from Mikey, Gerard pockets it. “Seriously, thank you. Do we owe you anything for it?”

Ray looks at him appraisingly. “You keep space and time from collapsing inward, and we’ll call it even.”

Gerard’s smile wobbles and falls. “Uh. We’ll try.”

“Good.” Standing up, Ray claps him on the back. “Now, when are you guys taking off?”

Mikey and Gerard share a look. “I could go whenever,” Mikey says. “But I’m not the one who started in ancient Athens and lugged dead weight the whole way.”

Frank makes a wounded noise. “It’s not my fault I’m not a time freak like you guys.”

“I think I’m good.” Gerard sits up straight and gets between them before either of them can really dig in their heels. A tiny, selfish part of Frank is irritated, because even though he knows he shouldn’t, he almost wishes Gerard was too exhausted so they’d be forced to spend some time in bed together. He shakes the thought from his head. “I slept earlier, and my next post is only a few years from now.”

“When?” Frank is starting to learn that if he doesn’t ask questions before they leave, Gerard is never going to remember to tell him.

“1942, Greenwich Village in Manhattan.”

“Shit,” Mikey says sharply, mouth pinching down into a scowl. “We don’t overlap. My New York post isn’t until the 1960s.”

“My ‘60s post is in Los Angeles for Warhol’s soup cans.” Gerard’s fingers twitch in his lap. “We don’t meet up again until Frank’s era, do we?”

“I guess not.” Mikey’s eyes are unfocused, like he’s trying to put something together in his head. “We could head straight there. With you and I sharing Frank’s weight, we could probably make it.”

Gerard chews on his bottom lip. “But what about  _ Nighthawks?” _

They all stare at him. Even Ray looks confused.  _ “Nighthawks?” _ Frank finally asks.

“You know, by Edward Hopper?”

Frank shakes his head. “No clue, dude.”

Gerard, the pretentious asshole, has the audacity to look offended. “Seriously? It’s a critical piece of American art. One of the best examples of modernism and social realism.”

Mikey waves a hand in the air. “Doesn’t matter. We’re skipping it.” When he catches sight of Gerard’s face, his tone softens. “You’re going to have to let this one go, Gee.”

“I can’t just keep abandoning my posts.” Gerard grinds his knuckle into an eye. “Fuck. I’m a terrible fucking Keeper.”

“Promise we won’t tell anyone.” Mikey knocks their knees together. He’s obviously trying to lift Gerard’s spirits, but all he gets is a weak smile in return.

Trying a different approach, Frank teases, “I don’t know, I might. Is there, like, a counsel I can report to?”

“Fucker.” Gerard reaches over to mess up his hair, but Frank dodges. He gets a flick to the ear instead. It’s worth it, because a tiny bit of light has returned to Gerard’s eyes. Still, that doesn’t mean he’s not going to retaliate.

Watching them with a bemused sort of smile, Ray shakes his head. “I wouldn’t worry about it, Gee. It’s not like he’s going to remember this anyway.”

Mid-squabble with Gerard, Frank freezes. “What?” Then, after he replays the words in his head again, “What the hell are you talking about?”

Ray’s whole body goes rigid, eyes flashing as he looks at Mikey and Gerard and realizes his mistake. “You guys didn’t tell him?” It’s almost a whisper.

“Tell me what?” Frank demands, extracting his limbs from the tangle on the couch and sitting up straighter. He tries to keep his tone under control, but the edges of it are tense and frayed. “I’m not going to remember this?”

Gerard clears his throat and looks away. Under different circumstances, Frank would feel bad for making him so anxious, but right now he can’t find an ounce of sympathy. “We really need to get going, Frank.”

“I’m not going fucking anywhere until you tell me what Ray’s talking about.” Frank grits his teeth. 

Gerard’s jaw clenches and unclenches. “We don’t have time for this right now.”

“Fine. Then go ahead.” Frank’s skin feels like it’s on fire. He tries to take a deep breath, but it feels like sucking in methane. His head spins. “Good luck figuring out what to do, seeing as how I’m the only one who’s lived through this shit before.”

In an uncharacteristically shaky voice, Mikey says, “Do you want me to tell him?” 

They all look at each other.  _ “Somebody _ better fucking tell me,” Frank growls. 

For a second, the room is silent except for harsh breathing. “When, um.” Gerard swallows so hard it’s audible. “If the timeline resets, it’ll change anything working linearly back to how it was beforehand. That means that all the art that got destroyed will exist again, every version of Mikey and I will separate back into our original eras, and — so will you. Your memory won’t survive. You’ll go back to exactly how you were before the paintings at my gallery were burned.”

“But you’ll remember, right?” Frank tilts his head to glare up at him. Gerard nods meekly. “Fuck you. You  _ transcend time. _ Of course you will.”

“Frank—” Gerard starts, eyes pleading. Frank can barely stand to look at him. There’s no way this is new information for Gerard. He should have  _ told _ him. He should have said something before they — fuck. Frank can’t even think about it. “You know that if I could change it—”

“You can’t,” Frank says stiffly, refusing to meet his eyes. “You can’t change it. But you’re right. We should go.”

Gerard’s mouth opens and shuts like a fish out of water. Standing up, Frank nods to Mikey and offers up his hands. “C’mon,” he says. “You can take me, right?”

“Yeah, but—” Mikey can obviously tell he’s getting in the middle of something.

“Gerard’s tired,” interrupts Frank. With a self-deprecation smirk, he finishes, “You get to take the dead weight this time.”

It doesn’t wipe the weariness off of Mikey’s face, but he takes one of Frank’s hands. “Thanks again, Ray,” he says over his shoulder. He stretches out his other palm to Gerard on the couch. “Gee? You ready?”

“Yeah,” Gerard says hollowly.

The strain starts up on the back of Frank’s neck and down his spine, and he curls his toes, waiting for the familiar blackness that will yank him from this era to the next. He squeezes his eyes shut, but somewhere distant he hears Ray say, “Good luck, guys.”

Before everything goes dark, Frank’s last thought is that yeah, they’re definitely going to need it.

For the first time in forever, when he opens his eyes, he recognizes his surroundings. They’re on a street corner in downtown New Brunswick. Frank never thought he’d be so ecstatic to see its worn down storefronts or to smell the shitty Jersey air. It takes a lot of sheer willpower to not drop to his knees and kiss the ground.

“Home,” he says, almost choked-up. “Fuck, I’m finally home.” 

Surprisingly, Gerard hasn’t fainted yet. He looks a little woozy, as does Mikey, but not nearly as bad as it had been before. Maybe carrying Frank all that way through time really was what made it so horrible. 

Gerard’s staring at him like he’s never seen him before. Frank’s good mood abruptly dissipates. 

He reaches into the pocket of his denim jacket — fuck, his  _ normal _ jacket — and pulls out his phone. The display tells him it’s almost noon, which makes sense considering the sun is high in the sky. When he goes to put it back, his fingers brush up against something else. Fuck, his  _ smokes. _

He’s been too preoccupied the past few days to truly get itchy for a cigarette, but now that he’s got a pack at the tip of his fingers, he can’t wait another second. He rummages around for his lighter with one hand as he shakes a cigarette loose with other, lighting up and taking a drag as fast as humanly possible. The familiar heat is grounding. 

“Okay,” Frank says on an exhale, since Mikey is too busy turning in a circle to examine their surroundings and Gerard is still staring at him like he’s an alien. “It’s about noon. Your gallery doesn’t open until seven tonight. I’m assuming you both know where it is, so I’ll meet you there.”

Mikey blinks at him a few times in succession, comically slow. “Fuck. We really  _ are _ in college together.”

“And I actually threw you in jail!” Gerard exclaims, aghast. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”

If there weren’t so many things already weighing on Frank’s shoulders, he might have laughed. As it is, he ignores Gerard and manages to send Mikey a weak smile before turning on his heel and heading towards the next street over. Campus isn’t that far of a walk.

“Wait!” Gerard calls after him. “Frank? Where are you going?”

For a glorious second, Frank toys with the idea of not answering him at all. “My dorm,” he yells back. “Just like we never met, right?”

He very purposely does not look back over his shoulder.

*

There’s still a cold vegan pizza shoved in the very back of Frank’s section of the fridge. For a wild second, he’s convinced that it should have gone bad by now, but then it hits him. No time has passed here at all. He’s probably even supposed to be in class right now.

He sits in front of the TV and eats four slices, which is two more than he would normally be able to stomach. He regrets it almost immediately.

But he supposes it doesn’t even fucking matter. In a few hours, this is all going to be over, and he won’t have to remember overdoing it on the pizza. He won’t have to remember being lonely in his dorm, counting every minute as it ticks by on the clock instead of watching stupid reality television like he told himself he wanted to. 

He won’t have to remember what it felt like to kiss Gerard.

Fuck. He drops his plate into the kitchenette’s sink with far more force than necessary, not caring if it makes the ceramic crack. 

A threadbare, hopeful voice in the back of his head wants to believe that even if he forgets the past few days, when he meets Gerard at his art gallery again, they’ll hit it off just like the first time. But in reality, he doesn’t even know if he’ll have a  _ shot _ — he could very well wake up the morning after the gallery opening with his memory wiped and never see Gerard again. 

Even if that isn’t the case, it won’t be the same. Not when Gerard is a goddamn  _ Timekeeper _ and Frank is just some asshole who can’t even keep his GPA up. Plus, maybe there’s a Keepers’ clause. Maybe Keepers aren’t allowed to hang around people who know what they are, or people who once knew. 

That would mean he’s going to lose Mikey, too.

He bangs his head against the front of the fridge. Fuck. He hadn’t considered that before. Maybe it’s a good thing he won’t have to worry about any of this tomorrow morning.

There’s a knock on the door. Grumbling, Frank detaches his forehead from the fridge. It’s probably Trevor. Trevor always forgets his fucking key.

He swings the door open. It’s not Trevor.

“I forced Mikey to tell me your room number. Don’t be mad at him.” As soon as he’s done speaking, Gerard puts both hands in front of his chest like he’s anticipating an attack. His hair is even more of a mess than it had been the first night they’d met. It’s also super fucking annoying that he’s back in modern clothes now, because it makes him even better-looking than he had been all the times before.

Still. Frank may be a sucker for a pretty face, but he’s not that easy. He crosses his arms. “What the hell do you want?”

“I want to apologize,” Gerard says, frustratingly genuine. “I should have told you about resetting the timeline a long time ago.”

“Yeah, you fucking should’ve.” Frank doesn’t move to the side to let Gerard in.

“I know, but I didn’t. Because I was scared.” He flaps a hand between them. “Of this.”

“This?”

“Of you  _ hating _ me.” Gerard wrings his hands together and stares at Frank beseechingly. “Jesus, I’m trying to fix this, will you at least let me in?”

Wordlessly, Frank steps out of the way so Gerard can slip past him. He’s doing it more because an alarm goes off if the dorm door is propped open for longer than two minutes, not so much because he’s ready to forgive. Gerard sits down on the couch, but Frank stays standing.

“You shouldn’t have.” Frank clears his throat so the words come out stronger. “You shouldn’t have let me kiss you if you knew. That wasn’t fair.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Gerard tugs on the ends of his hair. “But, god,  _ you _ try resisting the gorgeous guy you’ve been traveling with since ancient Greece.”

That makes Frank’s heart skip a beat. He ignores it. “Did you ever plan on fucking telling me? Or were you just going to let me wake up tomorrow having never met you?”

“I was going to tell you.” Gerard drops his gaze guiltily. “Um. Eventually. Whenever it was a good time.”

“There was  _ never _ going to be a good time for that.” Noticing his fists are clenched, Frank pries them back open and shoves them in his pockets. “Not when we’re so preoccupied trying to keep the entire world’s timeline of art from collapsing inward!”

“I fucking know!” Gerard shouts, then rocks backwards on the couch, looking remorseful. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—” He sighs. “I’m sorry.”

Frank’s stomach seems to be going through the entire catalog of Boy Scout knots. He sort of wants to go stick his head in the freezer or something just so his blood will stop feeling like it’s going to boil over. “Maybe I should be glad I’m going to forget about all of this,” he says finally.

Gerard looks up at him, mouth agape. Frank can see his own hurt reflected back in his eyes. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do,” Frank says. He’s not sure of anything anymore, besides the fact that he’s not going to lose another argument.

“Frank.” Pushing himself off the couch, Gerard takes a step towards him. Frank knows he should back away, but he doesn’t. “Do you truly, honestly think that we could make it through all those past lives together and  _ not _ find each other here, too?”

“Not if I don’t remember it,” Frank says, but it’s weak. 

“I’ll remember it.” Gerard’s too close now, and Frank doesn’t know if he’s ready for what comes next. He doesn’t know if that matters. “Whatever happens tonight, I promise I’ll tell you about it someday.”

Frank’s breathing is shallow. He’s running out of arguments. He’s not entirely sure why he’s even trying anymore. “It’ll be different.”

“I don’t care.” Gerard shakes his head, the ghost of a smile on his lips. “It’ll still be you. I promise I’ll find you.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” Even as he says it, Frank’s fingers itch to reach out, to grab Gerard by the front of his shirt and reel him in. He knows it’s a terrible idea.

“I can keep this one,” Gerard says. “We’ve got all our lives ahead of us.”

Frank’s heart does a flip-flop thing into his stomach that can’t be healthy. “You said fate wasn’t real.”

“I’m not talking about fate.”

Gerard’s face is so close to his that he could bridge the gap in an instant. Frank holds his breath, waits for him to do it, but he doesn’t make the move.

“Fuck,” Frank whines, feeling the last bit of his resolve crumble. “I was supposed to be mad at you.” 

Gerard’s face lights up immediately. Frank threads a hand into his hair and pulls, crashing their lips together so he can kiss the stupid smirk off of him. Gerard kisses back eagerly, walking them disjointedly towards the couch until they fall back on it with Frank on top.

“Where am I gonna be when the timeline resets?” Frank says, then leans up to kiss away the worry line that creases between Gerard’s brows at the question.

“I don’t know.” Gerard pulls him back down to press their mouths together again. “But I’ll find you,” he repeats.

“And in the next life?” Frank knows he’s getting ahead of himself. He just can’t help it, not with Gerard pressed up warm underneath him and running his hands up and down his sides.

“Yes,” Gerard breathes, finally going for Frank’s shirt. Frank has to bite his lip to keep from making an embarrassing sound at the feeling of Gerard’s hands on his skin. “And the next one, and the next one, and the one after that.”

“Okay, Gee.” Frank tucks his head into the crook of Gerard’s neck, breathing in. This isn’t for later, because he’s not going to remember this later. This is for right now. “Okay.”

*

“Mikey, you should find the security tapes and make sure no one tampers with them.” Frank shivers, much chillier now that the sun has gone down, but it doesn’t detract from the determined look on his face. “Gerard, you just need to act like a normal curator. We’ll do everything exactly the same as the first time, except I won’t leave the back room. If all goes well, our criminal will come right to us.”

“I’m still not a fan of leaving you alone in the back room.” Gerard frowns a little. Frank shoots him a look. “What? They could be dangerous!”

“I can hold my own.” He knows they’re all thinking back to the fight in the kitchen in Paris, but he refuses to get into it again. The fact that he’s disposable remains. Gerard’s just going to have to deal with a little bit of worry.

“Alright.” Gerard backs down, pulling his own coat around him tighter. Frank entertains the brief fantasy of pressing up against him and wrapping it around the both of them. “Should we all go in there at the same time? Will that look weird?”

“We can stagger it a little if you want.” Frank pulls out his phone and checks the time again. Half an hour until things go pyro. “Oh, hey, you’ll actually be on time now.”

Gerard’s eyebrows dip. “Was I late to my own gallery opening?” His memory seems to catch up to him. “Oh my god, I  _ was.” _

“Tragically,” Frank says, lifting a hand up to rub Gerard’s shoulder. “You guys ready for this?”

“Doesn’t matter if we’re ready,” drawls Mikey. “Time marches on anyway.”

Frank really missed college Mikey. He turns to smile at him, then says, “Actually, do you want to head in there first? We’ll catch up.”

After darting a glance between them, Mikey rolls his eyes, but he still huffs out a, “Yes.” The gallery’s door clangs as it swings shut behind him.

There’s a sheepish little smile on Gerard’s face. “He totally knows what we’re up to.”

“I don’t care,” Frank says, grabbing the lapels of Gerard’s coat. “He’s about to walk up to a bartender that’s exactly his type. I think he’ll get over it.”

“Come here,” Gerard says, finally leaning down to kiss him. Frank wraps his arms around him and holds him close. He dips his fingers down into Gerard’s large coat pockets and discreetly fishes out the bug, hiding it in his own jacket once they separate. Gerard smiles down at him, oblivious. 

Once they’re inside, Gerard really does do a spectacular job at acting as if nothing is out of the ordinary. He orders champagne, talks to investors, brags about his artists, and drags innocent souls into discussions on the many forms of impressionism. Frank does his own thing, milling around and taking a second look at everything he’s seen before. Occasionally, he’ll brush up against Gerard and grab his fingers, offering a reassuring squeeze. Gerard never breaks off his conversation to acknowledge it, but Frank can see the way his eyes light up.

The facades only drop once they’re in the back room. Frank has already seen all the art under the tarps, so there’s not much to do.

Gerard tugs on the light bulb hanging from the ceiling. “I really convinced you to come back here to show you art, huh? You really fell for that?”

“Please,” Frank mutters, pressing their foreheads together. “I knew what you were up to, one hundred percent.”

Gerard grins. “That doesn’t change the fact that you still followed me.”

“Well.” Frank steals a quick kiss. “I certainly didn’t mind the view.”

Gerard laughs, but it peters out quickly. His eyebrows twitch. “Is it time?”

The glow of Frank’s phone adds an odd blue layer to the room as he checks. “Yeah, I think so. Any minute now.”

“Okay.” Gerard’s voice doesn’t shake, but it sounds like it takes a lot of effort to keep it that way. He meets Frank’s lips again, slower, softer. Too bittersweet. “Be safe. Please.”

“I will,” Frank says against his mouth. When Gerard finally pulls away and waves as he heads out the door, Frank feels his entire body relax. Gerard’s officially out of the line of fire now. He doesn’t know that, because he still thinks he’s carrying Ray’s prototype device — but that’s okay. Their culprit is going to come back here in just a minute, and Frank is going to have that thing on them and put them out of commission before they even have to chance to lay a finger on Gerard.

He switches off the ceiling light and hides in the shadows. 

It doesn’t take long.

Frank launches himself at the guy in a suit who walks in as soon as the door has swung shut, getting an arm around him in a headlock just like he used to with his dumb friends growing up. The man bellows, thrashing, and Frank tightens his hold until he stops struggling. It’s a good thing their arsonist isn’t that tall.

“I was just—” the guy wheezes out. “Bathroom!”

“You know this isn’t the fucking bathroom,” Frank hisses in his ear. Shimmying as best he can to get to his pocket without releasing the man, Frank grabs hold of the bug and starts to lift it up.

“Please!” the guy says. His terrified eyes are huge and glowing in the darkness. “My wallet’s in my front pocket if you — if you — take whatever you want!”

Frank feels his fingers hesitate. He’d been open to a lot of identities for their criminal, but a middle-aged dude in a suit offering up his cash doesn’t really fit into any of the categories. He’d at least expected the guy to fight back.

Just as Frank is opening his mouth to ask some questions, someone outside the door screams bloody murder.

“Fuck!” Dropping the man into a heap on the ground, Frank bolts to the back room door and throws it open. He’d grabbed _ the wrong guy. _

In the main room, dozens of guests are lying still on the ground. A familiar-looking, dark-haired woman is holding Gerard up against the wall with both hands around his throat. Mikey is nowhere to be seen.

“Remember me?” the woman snarls, nasty expression completely dichotomous to her neatly done makeup and pressed business suit. 

“Yeah,” Frank growls.  _ “Evanna.”  _ How could he forget Gerard’s biggest, cockblocking, overbearing investor?

“That’s not my name.” Evanna tightens her grip a little more on Gerard’s throat. A hair harder and Gerard’s airflow would be cut clean off, Frank can see it in Gerard’s face. Frank’s stomach roils.

“Really?” he asks sweetly, trying to keep the fear at bay. “Because I’m pretty sure I remembered that right. I’m pretty good with names.”

“Frank, don’t—” Gerard barely gets out, making a choked noise as Evanna turns his attention back on him. He looks like he’s trying more than anything to phase through the wall. Even if he could concentrate enough to time jump, the effort could very possibly kill him.

“I am the Timekeeper of War!” Evanna roars. 

Frank wants to ask  _ Who? _ but the horrified shock on Gerard’s face tells Frank he’s already figured it out.

“I know you all forgot about me,” Evanna spits at Gerard, “You thought our whole first generation faded away. But I haven’t faded yet. You all tried your fucking best to get rid of me, making peace treaties and fighting your pathetic battles with drones, in cyberspace, whatever —  _ ruining _ the tradition of blood on the battlefield with technology. But you can’t go on like that forever. I’m here now.”

Gerard’s face is nearly blue. Frank knows with unwavering certainty that the only way any of them are getting out of this is if Frank keeps her attention on him. “How come you’re fucking with the art timeline?” he hears himself say. “What wars are here, huh?”

She turns to face him, her scowl menacing. “You think this was my original plan? I spent years trying to tip the world into chaos through the bigger influences. I screwed with politics and gave you weapons that could blow up the planet. Yet you  _ still  _ wouldn’t kill each other. There wasn’t enough war in the world for me to live on. I needed to go after the weaker points.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Frank can see Gerard inching towards his pocket, still not knowing he’s going to turn up empty. The minuscule weight of the device feels like a ton in Frank’s own jacket. The only choice he has is to carry on the act. “Weaker points? Like art?”

“Art,” Evanna parrots, mouth twisting in distaste. “I realized that humanity would never tip over into chaos because they had too much hope. They had too much salvation in their own  _ art. _ So I destroyed it.” She turns back to face Gerard, and Frank feels himself blanch. “Once I’m done here, there’ll be nothing left. The world will finally give up, and I’ll have the war I need to rise again. Almost makes it worth posing as an investor for this pathetic gallery.”

She pulls one hand back, only to reposition it more firmly around Gerard’s neck. Frank’s knees go weak. She’s going to squeeze so hard and it’ll crush Gerard’s windpipe, too much damage for anyone to recover. Too much for time to recover. 

He almost can’t watch, can’t move, and only gets his body in motion when Evanna grits her teeth, flinging himself at her with as much reckless force as he can muster and tackling her to the ground. In the back of his mind, he registers a sharp of sting of pain as Evanna’s fingernails dig into his cheek, but that’s not nearly as important as Gerard’s heaving breath he hears behind him.

“Get off of me!” Evanna shrieks, trying to pin him but getting caught on the elbows and knees of the unconscious guests around them. They wrestle for a minute while Frank tries unsuccessfully to hold her down. Another jolt of pain registers in his ribs as she jabs him, but he doesn’t give up his concentration to check for damage. 

Out of nowhere, he feels a sharp tug on the back of his neck.

“You’re not fucking going anywhere,” Frank spits, trying to get to his pocket. Evanna almost throws him off, but he holds on, desperately trying to snap her concentration. The tug of a jump continues, but it’s not getting stronger. She can’t concentrate, Frank realizes.

“You can’t do it,” he goads. “You came all this way and now you can’t do it.”

“I—” Evanna stills for just a moment, but it’s enough. Frank rips the bug from his pocket and slaps it on her neck, and she howls and spasms from the shock of it.

“Did it work?” Frank yells over her. Gerard is slid halfway down the wall, panting and tenderly touching his own throat. “Gee! Did it work? Is the art back?”

“It doesn’t — doesn’t feel like it,” Gerard manages. “We would. Not be here.”

Frank looks down helplessly at Evanna pinned underneath him. Gerard’s right. If they’d reset the timeline, he’d be at a normal gallery opening right now, not in a deathmatch with a bent old Timekeeper. But what did they do  _ wrong? _

“Need to,” Gerard pants hoarsely, “take her back. Before Greece. All of it.”

Just like Ray had said. They needed to take her out of the broken timeline entirely. Beneath him, Evanna thrashes and groans. 

“Where’s Mikey?” Frank asks frantically. Gerard obviously can’t jump, not even close, but they need to get Evanna out of here  _ now. _

“Don’t know,” Gerard gets out. “Might be…” He gestures weakly at the bodies passed out around them. 

“Mikey!” Frank yells, desperate. The only sound is Evanna’s thrashing as they wait for an answer. None comes.

“I can—” Gerard pushes himself off the wall, starting towards Frank unsteadily. He almost collapses the second there’s nothing supporting him. 

“You  _ can’t,” _ Frank says sternly. “How far back would you even need to take her? Back to the Aborigines? Fucking Mesopotamia? It would  _ kill _ you.”

“Mesopotamia,” Gerard all but whispers. “I—”

“I’m not going to fucking lose you!” Frank cuts him off before he can continue to argue his suicide mission. “Okay, Mesopotamia. I’ll tell Mikey that when he gets here.”  _ If _ he ever gets here. “Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia,” he repeats to himself, focusing hard on it. 

He abruptly feels time tugging on him. Evanna has gone almost completely still where’s she pinned, and Frank didn’t even notice. 

“How are you—” he starts to snarl, but the world goes black before he can finish his sentence.

The last thing he hears is Gerard’s voice, but he can’t understand what he’s trying to say. 

*

Frank’s head is throbbing, making spots dance across his eyelids, and he tries to hold back a groan of pain. He waits for the worst to pass and his nausea to subside before slowly opening an eye. He appears to be sprawled out on dusty ground, and laying next to him is a strange woman with a pained expression. She’s twitching erratically. That's usually never a good sign. Frank tries to shift a couple of inches away.

Why can’t he remember how he got here? There's nothing surrounding him but the bare earth, the blazing sun, and a woman he doesn't recognize.

“What’ve you done to me?” the woman asks, voice cracking and coated with misery. “Where did you take me?”

“What?” he says. His voice is just about as raw as hers. “Who the hell are you?”

“You know me,” she says.

“I don’t.” Is that true?

“I know  _ you,” _ the woman says brokenly. “You’re one of us.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Frank’s tone is somewhere between angry and earnest. He knows her, too, but he can’t place it. Something is poking at him, an identity, a memory, but it’s like he’s trying to distinguish shapes through warped glass.

“Don’t play dumb.” She rolls onto her side, away from him. “We might forget everything else when we jump backward, but we never forget we’re Keepers.”

Somewhere deep inside of Frank, that name stirs something. He knows what it means. Maybe he’s  _ always _ known what it meant.

“I want to forget,” she continues weakly. “I want to forget forever.” She touches something silver and small on her neck. Frank stares openly, since she’s looking the other way anyway. “I don’t know how.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Frank repeats, quieter, getting to his feet as discreetly as he can. Whoever this nut bag is, he’s just going to let her be. She can rant to herself, but he doesn’t need to stick around and listen.

He walks until he reaches the edge of a river, and then he follows the river until he finds people. There isn’t any mass civilization in sight, just a small group, four of them scooping up water from the river with their hands and sipping. A younger one is sitting a few feet from them and playing with the soft earth beside the river. There’s a fire crackling softly behind them all, which makes sense given the sun’s low perch in the sky.

“Hey,” Frank says, stepping forward, not really knowing what’s possessing him. They all look at him, but Frank speaks to the kid, gesturing at what he’s got in his hands. “Try throwing that in the fire. If you mold it, you can hold water in it.”

They all do nothing but stare, so Frank takes his exit cue. As he’s padding away, though, he hears low chattering and movement, followed by the whoosh of something being placed in the fire. He doesn’t need to turn around and check to be sure.

He walks along the river for at least another mile, not that he has any way to measure, before it dawns on him.

“Oh,” he says, no one around to hear him. “I’m Inspiration.”

*

It’s hard to measure time when you’re moving through it, but it’s definitely a little while before Frank shows up in New Jersey around the twenty-first century and gets hit with a wave of memories like a fucking tsunami. Recalibrating in a new era is always painful, but this is  _ next level. _

It doesn’t take long to find the art gallery he’s seeing in his mind, which is a relief. Walking aimlessly in the streets with his hands stuffed in his pockets was bound to attract attention eventually.

He looks through the huge glass storefront but doesn’t see anyone inside. The lights are on and the sign says open, though, so he shoulders open the door and steps inside. Despite being alone, he immediately feels underdressed. 

“I’ll be there in one sec!” comes an oddly familiar voice. Frank whips his head around in time to see the door to a back room swing open with alarming force, and a man comes out carrying a massive canvas. 

“Hi,” the man says breathlessly. “How can I help you?” He looks up, and their gazes meet. Suddenly, a whole new wave of memories crashes over Frank, and it feels like puzzle pieces slotting together, or hands that fit perfectly with each other.

“It’s you,” Frank says, voice choked. “Gerard.”

_ “Frank.” _ Gerard drops the canvas without a second thought, and Frank has just enough time to wince at the impact before he’s swept up in a bone-crushing hug. “Oh my god I’ve — I’ve been waiting, and hoping, and Mikey thought I was crazy, but you just  _ disappeared _ into nothing, I knew there had to be a reason, I knew you couldn’t just be  _ gone, _ I—”

“Thank you,” Frank murmurs against where he’s pressed into Gerard’s neck, cutting off his rambling. “For waiting. And for remembering.”

“I refused to go anywhere I would forget you,” Gerard says in a strained voice, clearly holding back emotion. “I knew you’d come back. I knew you were out there. I couldn’t let myself forget.”

“I forgot,” Frank says, almost ashamed of it even though he couldn’t have done anything to help it. “But I just had this feeling like — I was missing something. I was looking for something more than just my next post.”

Gerard’s eyes almost bug out of his head. “You have  _ posts _ now?”

Frank pulls back a little so he can smile teasingly at Gerard, unable to hold back his glee. “Hi, Gerard. It’s nice to meet you. I’m the Timekeeper of Inspiration.”

For a solid fifteen seconds, Gerard just stares.

When he finally does react, it’s to grab Frank’s face and kiss him hard. He can feel Gerard pouring all the time they’ve been apart into it, all the heartache and misery and not-knowing. And now all the joy. All the fucking relief. Frank leans against him and just lets him have it, lets himself be pulled into Gerard the way he’s always wanted.

“God,” Gerard murmurs when they pull apart for a moment, foreheads pressed together. “I have so much to teach you.”

“I came first!” Frank exclaims indignantly. “I have so much to teach  _ you!” _

“As long as that means we’re sticking together,” Gerard says, so tender it hurts. 

The only thing Frank can do is look up at him earnestly and say, “I think we were always meant to.”

“I thought I told you fate wasn’t real,” Gerard says, but he’s smiling.

“Please.” Frank puts his head back on Gerard’s shoulder, and they sway together a little, just a one-two on the gallery’s floor. This is where he was always supposed to be. It’s okay that he had to take thousands of years to realize it. “We’ve got something much better than fate.”


End file.
